Toegangen (*): For most things in daily life accessing will trump owning

05-Accessing (1:03) (51 views)

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/w0huO8ACoDU

“Toegang tot is zo superieur aan eigendom dat het op verschillende manieren de grenzen van de economie zal verleggen”

Er is iets interessants gaande
A reporter from TechCrunch recently observed, “Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no cotent. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory (inventaris). And Airnb, the world’s largest accomodation provider, owns no real estate. Something interesting is happening.” (p. 109)

Iets bezitten doet er niet zo veel meer toe
Indeed, digital media exhibits a similar absence. Netflix, the world’s largest video hub, allows me to watch a movie without owning it. Spotify, the largest music streaming company, lets me listen to whatever music I want without owning it. Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited enables me to read any book in its 800,000-volume library without owning books, and PlayStation Now lets me play games without purchasing them. Every year I own less of what I use.
Possession is not important as it once was. Accessing is more important than ever. (p. 109)

Mary Poppins’ tas vol spullen
Pretend you (Stel je voor dat je) live inside the world’s largest rental store. Why would you own anything? You can borrow (lenen) whatever you need within arm’s reach. Instant borrowing gives you most of the benefits of owning and few of its disadvantages (nadelen). You have no responsibility (verantwoordelijkheid om) to clean, to repair, to store, to sort, to insure (verzekeren), to upgrade, to maintain (handhaven). What if this rental store where a magical cupboard (kast), a kind of Mary Poppins carpetbag, where an endless selection of gear (spullen) was crammed (ingepropt) into a bottomless container? All you have to do is knock on the outside and summon (ontbieden) an item, and abracadabra – there it is.
Advanced technology has enabled this magical rental store. It’s the internet/web/phone world. Its virtual cupboards are infinite. (p. 109-110)


Vijf trends
Five deep technological trends accelerate (versnellen) this long-term move toward accessing and away from ownership. (p. 110)
* Dematerialization (1)
* Real-time on demand (2)
* Decentralization (3)
* Platform synergy (4)
* Clouds (5)

1. Dematerialiseren
The trend in the past 30 years has been to make better stuff using fewer materials. A classic example is the beer can (het bierblikje), whose basic shape, size, and function have been unchanged for 80 years. () Further ingenious folds and curves introduced yet more reductions in the raw materials such that today the can weighs only 13 grams, or one fifth of its original weight. (p. 110)

Digital technology accelerates dematerialization by hastening the migration from products to services. The liquid nature of services means they don’t have to be bound to materials. But dematerialization is not just about digital goods. (p. 111)

An automobile today is really a computer on wheels. Smart silicon enhances (verbetert) a car’s engine performance, braking safety – and all the more true for electric cars. This rolling computer is about to be connected and become an internet car. () The connected car will also become the new office. If you are not driving in your private space, you will either work or lay in it. I predict that by 2025 the bandwidth to a high-end driverless car will exceed the bandwidth into your home. (p. 111-112)

As cars become more digital, they will tend to be swapped (uitgewisseld) and shared and used in the same social way we swap digital media. The more we embed intelligence and smarts into the objects in our households and offices, the more we’ll treat these articles as social property. We’ll share aspects of them (perhaps what they are made of, where they are, what they see), which means that we’ll think of ourselves as sharing them. (p. 112)

When Amazon founder Jeff Bezos first introduced the Kindle ebook reader in 2007, he claimed it was not a product. He said it was a service selling access to reading material. (p. 112)

The switch from “ownership that you purchase” to “access that you subscribe to” overturns many conventions. Ownership is casual (terloops), fickle (wispelturig). If something better comes along, grab it. A subscription (abonnement), on the other hand, gushes (stromen) a never-ending stream of updates, issues, and versions that force a constant interaction between the producer and the consumer. It is not a onetime event; it’s an ongoing relationship. (p. 112)

The longer you are with the service, the better it gets to know you; and the better it knows you, the harder it is to leave and start over again. It’s almost like being married. (p. 113)

2. Real-time on demand
Our appetite (lust) for the instant is insatiable (onverzadigbaar).The cost of real-time engagement requires massive coordination and degrees of collaboration that were unthinkable a few years ago. Now that most people are equipped with a supercomputer in their pocket, entirely new economic forces are being unleashed (worden losgelaten). If smartly connected, a crowd of amateurs can be as good as the average solo professional. If smartly connected, the benefits of existing products can be unbundled and remixed in unexpected and delightful ways. If smartly connected, products melt into services that can be accessed continuously. If smartly connected, accessing is the default. (p. 117)

For better or worse, our lives are accelerating, and the only speed fast enough is instant. The speed of electrons will be the speed of the future. Deliberate (bewuste) vacations from this speed will remain a choice, but on average communication technology is biased toward (geeft de voorkeur aan) moving everything to on demand. And on demand is biased toward access over ownership. (p. 118)

3. Decentralisatie
We are at the midpoint in a hundred-year scramble (wedloop) toward greater decentraliazation. The glue (lijm) that holds institutions and processes as they undergo massive decentering (decentraliseren) is cheap, ubiquitous (alomtegenwoordig) communication. Without the ability to remain connected as things spread wide into networks, firms would collapse (in elkaar klappen). That’s true, but also slighty backward (achterlijk). It’s truer (eerlijker) to say that the technological means of instant long-distance communication enabled (maakte mogelijk) this era of decentraliazation. That is, once we wrapped (verpakten) the globe in endless circles of wires crossing the deserts (woestijnen) and beneath the oceans, decentraliazation was not only possible, but inevitable (onvermijdelijk). (p. 118-119)

The decentralized web/internet is now the central public commons. The good of the web serves me as if I owned it, yet I need to do very little to maintain it. I can summon (dwingend (be)vragen) it anytime, with the snap of a finger. I enjoy the full benefits of its amazing work – asnwering questions like a genius, navigating like a wizard, entertaining like a pro – without the burdens of ownership, simply by accessing it. (I pay its taxes with my subscriptions for internet access.) The more our society decentralizes, the more important accessing becomes. (p. 122)

4. De synergie van platformen
For a long time there were two basic ways to organize human work: a firm and a marketplace. A firm, such as a company (bedijf), had definite boundaries (duidelijke grenzen), was permission based, and enabled people to increase (vergroten) their efficiency via collaboration (samenwerking) more than if they worked outside the firm. A marketplace had more permeable borders (doorlaatbare grenzen), required no permission to participate, and used the “invisible hand” to allot (toebedelen) resources (middelen) most efficiently. Recently a third way to organize work has emerged (is ontstaan): the plaftorm. (p. 122)

A platform is a foundation (stichting, fundament) created by a firm that lets other firms build products and services upon it. It is neither market nor firm, but something new. A platform, like a department store, offers stuff it did not create. One of the first widely succesful plaforms was Microsoft’s operating system (OS). (p. 122)

Later, a second generations of platforms aquired more of the attributes of markets, so they were a bit of a market and a firm. One of the first of these was iTunes for the iPhone. Apple, the firm, owned the platform, which also became a marketplace for phone apps. (p. 123)

A third generation of platforms further expanded the power of the marketplaces. Unlike traditional two-sided markets – say, a farmers’ market that enables buyers and sellers – a plaftorm ecosystem became a multisided market. A good example of this is Facebook. The firm created some rules and protocols that formed a marketplace where independent sellers (college students) produced their own profiles, which were matched up in a marketplace with their freinds. The attention of the students was sold to advertisers. Game companies sold to students. Third-party apps sold to advertisers. Third-party apps sold to other third-party apps. And so on in multiple-way matches. This ecosysem of interdependent (onderling afhankelijke) species keeps expanding (uitbreiden), and will keep expanding as long as Facebook can manage its rules and its own growth as a firm. (p. 123)

The wealthiest (allerrijkste) and most disruptive organizations today are almost all multisided platforms – Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook. All these giants employ third-party vendors to increase the value of their platform. All employ APIs extensively that facilitate and encourage others to play with it. (p. 124)

At almost every level of a platform, sharing is the default – even if it is just the rules of competition. Your success hinges (hangt af van) on the success of others. Maintaining the idea of ownership becomes problematic, because it rests on notions of “private property”; but neither “private” nor “property” has great meaning in an ecosystem. As more is shared, less will act like property. It is no coincidence (toeval) that less privacy (constant sharing of intimate lives) and more piracy (disregard of intellectual property) are both breeding on platforms. (p. 124)

Dematerialization and decentralization and massive communication all lead to more platforms. Platforms are factories for services; services favor access over ownership. (p. 125)

5. Clouds
The movies, music, books, and games that you access all live on clouds. A cloud is a colony of millions of computers that are braided together seamlessly (naadloos samengevlochten) to act as a single large computer. The bulk of what you do on the web and phone today is done on cloud computing. Though invisible, clouds runs our digital lives. (p. 125)

A central advantage (voordeel) of a cloud is that the bigger it gets, the smaller and thinner your device can be. The cloud does all the work, while the device we hold is just the window into the cloud’s work. When I look into my phone screen and see a live video stream, I am looking into the cloud. (p. 126)

Deze trends zullen de komende 30 jaar onverminderd doorgaan
In the coming 30 years the tendency toward the dematerialized, the decentralized, the simultaneouos, the plafform enabled, and the cloud will continue unabated (zal onverminderd doorgaan). As long as the costs of communications and computation drop (dalen) due to advances in technology, these trends are inevitable. They are the result of networks of communication expanding till they are global and ubiquitous (alomtegenwoordig), and as the networks deepen they gradually displace matter with intelligence. This grand shift will be true no matter where in the world (whether the United States, China, or Timbuktu) they take place. The underlying mathematics and physics remain. As we increase dematerialization, decentralization, simultaneity, platforms, and the cloud – as we increase all those at once, access will continue to displace ownership. For most things in daily life, accessing will trump (overtroeven) owning. (p. 131)

* TOEGANGEN 
Kevin Kelly heeft bewust gezocht naar twaalf werkwoorden. Of van bepaalde begrippen werkwoorden gemmaakt. Access = toegang (tot). De kern van deze ‘kracht’ is dat we als mensheid wegdrijven van bezit en opschuiven naar een wereld waarin we (continue?) toegang hebben of krijgen tot (al dan niet betaalde) ‘dingen’ (producten én diensten).
Ergo: toegangen is mijn voorstel voor accessing. Een (nog niet bestaand) werkwoord!

Twaalf technologische krachten die onze toekomst zullen vormen
01. Becoming (worden) – 02. Cognifying (slimmeren) – 03. Flowing (stromen) – 04. Screening (kijken) – 06. Sharing (delen) – 07. Filtering (filteren) – 08. Remixing (remixen) – 09. Interacting (interacteren) – 10. Tracking (tracken) – 11. Questioning (vragen) – 12. Beginning (beginnen)  

Citaat 379 (vrijdag 5 augustus 2016)
Homepage Citaten 2016