I own almost nothing. Seriously. My laptop and phone and whatever books I’m reading right now and some clothes. That’s it. But some collect and others hoard, and the latter’s driven by a deep psychological impulse. I suspect it has something to do with a desire for permanence, a vain attempt to defeat death.
Of course, the Borrowing Economy has made it possible to unclutter our lives somewhat, as information, rather than a physical product, is traded, the hardware disappeared into the software. In “Why You Soon Won’t Own Anything And Why That’s A Good Thing,” Johannes Koponen of Demos Helsinki believes this trend will not just continue apace but reach maximum speed. An excerpt:
Things get really interesting when we start talking about cars instead of music. What would it be like to access a car on-demand? You might say that we already have taxis. But a taxi isn’t as convenient as Netflix is. What would it be like to actually have the convenience of your own car without owning it?
Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) is a model for traffic without ownership. You pay a monthly fee for it, like with Spotify, tell the app where you are going and get instnat access to taxis, Ubers, buses, and so on. Everything is available on-demand and ownership is no longer needed.
MaaS is part of a trend called the “as a service” model. The framework began as a simple idea in software development, when companies started paying for access instead of buying permanent licenses for office programs. Now the same model is moving into the material world. Netflix, Spotify, AirBnb and Uber are all “as a service” companies.
“As a service” models become more and more feasible when the number of sensors that surround us increases. This development is often called the “Internet of Things”. But when we consider the Internet of Things from the perspective of disappearing products and the increase in new service models, we can effectively conclude that it is, in fact, the “Internet of No Things.”
What is so revolutionary about the “as a service” model then? Why is it good not to own things? There are two main reasons and these are related:
- Ownership makes us lazy.
- The planet cannot survive with us consuming so much stuff.•