- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New edition edition (3 May 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 014029547X
- ISBN-13: 978-0140295474
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 13 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 596,490 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
He's been called the postmodern Chicken Licken, but it so happens that the sky really is falling down. Jeremy Rifkin pulls the plug on the trend away from property ownership and free public life in The Age of Access. As usual, he's a bit ahead of the curve--most of us aren't yet fully immersed in the sea of leased products and packaged experiences that he sees awaiting us. Still, his eerie visions of a world of gatekeepers paying each other for access to nearly every aspect of human life brings a chilling new meaning to the phrase "pay to play" and should spark some debate over our new cultural revolution. Using examples from business and government experiments with just-in-time access to goods and services and resource sharing, Rifkin defines a new society of renters too busy breaking the shackles of material possessions to mourn the passing of public property. Are we encouraging alienation or participation? Can we trust corporations with stewardship of our social lives? True to form, the author asks more questions than he answers--a sign of an open mind. If property is theft, leased access is extortion, and The Age of Access warns us of the complex changes coming in our relationships with our homes, our communities, and our world. --Rob Lightner
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
Imagine waking up one day to find that virtually everything you do has become a "paid for" experience. It is part of a fundamental change taking place in the nature of business, contends Jeremy Ritkin. After several hundred years as the organising principles of civilisation, the traditional market systems is beginning to break down. On the horizon looms the "age of access", where we trade experiences instead of objects. In the hypercapitalist economy - characterised by continuous innovation and dizzying speed of change -buying thongs in markets an downing property becomes an outdated idea, while "just in time" access to virtually every kind of service, through vast commercial networks operating in cyberspace, becomes the norm. We increasingly pay for the experience of using things -in the form of subscriptions, memberships and leases -rather than pay for the things themselves. The bottom line: we are spending more and owning less. Similarly, companies are selling off property, leasing equipment, outsourcing activities and becoming "weightless". Ownership of physical property, once considered a valued asset, is now regarded as a liability in the corporate world. "Lifestyle marketing" is th buzz in the commercial world as more and more consumers become members of corporate sponsored clubs and participate in corporate sponsored activities and events. The business of business, therefore, is no longer about exchanging property but, rather, buying access to one's daily existence in small commercial time-segments. In this book the author asks, will any time be left for relationships of a non-commercial nature? The changes taking place are part of an even larger transformation in the nature of capitalism. we are making a long-term shift from a system based on manufacturing goods to one based on the selling of cultural experiences. Global travel and tourism, fashion, food, sport, gambling, the virtual worlds of cyberspace and even social causes, are fast becoming the centre of an experimental economy that trades in cultural resources.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
Comprehensive account of globalisation trends. Provides true real-life examples of globalisation as transcendence. The language of the book is exceptionally dynamic, which makes the reader feel all the dangers of inability to control globalising chaos.
0 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The Age of Access provides a thorough report on the dissonance of traditional culture in a technological sphere at the turn of the century focussing on the derivatives of capitalism from a social and economic perspective. Jeremy discusses the impact of electronic commerce on society, but omits the role of the individual in the formation of culture; he acknowledges the value of ideas and intangible assets, but disputes the commercial power of multinational corporations. The Age of Access takes the blue tack of economics and the red tack of politics and bounds them together to make them undistinguishable from each other by inadvertently encrypting the concept of capitalism and statism. The main flaw of the book is that it feeds on the readers false assumptions of capitalism. The Age of access more subliminally describes how the shift from individual rights to the violation of privacy is transforming modern life. The author does not take into account that a culture does not come up with ideas, individuals do, and that a superficial society that suppresses individualism will naturally deteriorate.
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