Information is not owned as easily as things are. Thus, the impression arises that information belongs to everyone. Ownership dominates the paradigm of the thing. A world made of information is controlled not through ownership but through access (Zugang). Binding oneself to things or places is replaced by briefly connecting to networks and platforms. The sharing economy also weakens identification with things.
Identification with the thing is the essence of ownership. The German word 'besitzen' (to own) comes from 'Sitzen' (to sit). The ceaseless imperative of movement already weakens identification with things and places. The influence of things and places on our identity formation also grows ever weaker. Identity today is produced mainly through information. We produce ourselves (produzieren) on the platform called social media. The French phrase 'se produire' — literally 'to produce oneself' — means to set oneself in a scene (sich in Szene setzen). We stage ourselves (inszenieren). We perform our identity.
The shift from ownership to access, in Jeremy Rifkin's view, is a fundamental paradigm change that transforms the life-world decisively. He even predicts the emergence of a new human type. "Entry, occupancy, 'access' are the core concepts of the age just beginning. [...] The shift in view of possessions in economic life will permanently alter how future generations see themselves and life itself. A world dominated by 'access' relationships is highly likely to give rise to a different type of human being.
A human being who has no interest in things and ownership is not subject to a 'thing morality' (Dingmoral) based on labor and property." He prefers play to labor, and experience and enjoyment to possession. The economy, too, takes on features of play once it reaches a cultural stage. Staging and performance gain ever more significance. Cultural production — that is, information production — increasingly appropriates the processes of artistic creation. Creativity becomes the slogan of that production.
The Disappearance of Rituals p.27
Personally, as someone who has worked in the IT industry through the 2010s and into the 2020s, there were many parts I resonated with and many points I need to keep in mind. But looking back, my childhood and college days were an era of mass production — a time when so-called SPA brands like Uniqlo (Japan), H&M (Sweden), ZARA (Spain), GAP (U.S.), and Forever 21 (U.S.) were steadily settling in, and everyone was rushing to benchmark them. It suddenly occurs to me that it may have been an era of an excess of things.
If today is an era of information excess — and of the disappearance of things — perhaps in the past era of a surplus of things, it wasn't things that vanished first, but relationships. In that regard, I'm personally paying attention to human deficiency. Not physical hunger, but the side effects of psychological hunger — we had already begun feeling them even before the information age.
As the author says, binding oneself to things or places is replaced by briefly connecting to networks and platforms.
Right. I agree.
But personally, I want to pay more attention to the point that this phenomenon resembles the way modern people relate to one another. A so-called state in which everyone has become a stranger. While it's fine to witness the change by recalling relationships of yesteryear, I think we need a response to the reality that has already become a phenomenon. In that respect, if everyone already stands in the position of a stranger, then binding to things and places can no longer form the same positive or essential ritual relationship as before. And instinctively, one can't help but gain a sense of stability precisely from briefly connecting to a network.
Personally, if there's a solution? — of course, nothing can be ultimate, but if there's a way to nudge this even slightly, I think it may be DAO. Neo-liberalism has already changed each country and that country's or market's ideology. A full rollback isn't possible, but I think improvement is. In practice, NFTs can individuate a digital item — which can be replicated infinitely — as if it were an offline thing. For example, even among a million identical slippers produced by Daiso, the moment I buy and start using one (well, even earlier, the moment production is complete..), it takes on a uniqueness distinct from the slippers on other shelves. Digital information that could once be replicated infinitely can now, if desired, be individually instantiated. Of course, the dominant forces of the neoliberal market won't go along easily, and in reality, most of this is being used merely for financial purposes..
In the past, digital ownership meant copyright. As the author points out, revenue was generated via added value obtained in the process of publishing works and controlling users' access to the platforms those works were published on. But from now — not from the future, but from right now — we can own the information itself. This is clearly a different texture from earlier digital.
In the era of surplus things, cooperatives essentially failed. Too ideological, too idealistic. But in an era of surplus information, I think cooperatives will be different. First, as mentioned, infinitely replicable, once-qualitative digital information has come to have quantitative units. Second, with SSI and similar moves, it's becoming commonsense that authority over personal data is gradually transferred from corporations or institutions to the individual. In the previous era of information surplus, information recorded as indistinguishable pieces meant an individual's data, too, could not be identified as unique value. But lately, starting with DID, we can see that this change is gaining momentum.
Even the ubiquitous metaverse, I think, will gradually settle in on this backdrop. Not as a lump of digital gear plastered with finance and tech minus any service — like pointless 3D avatars or ARVR..
