Material possessions

[peaceful_soul]

(This might be considered a blog, but I'd like some feedback)

For the last few day's, I've been thinking about the direction of where things are heading in our future. Taking bits and pieces of what we're seeing today and alluding it as foreshadowing. In doing so, I discovered that as time goes on, we are loosing our ability of ownership to materials. Take money for an example, if you were to ask me how much money I have in my wallet, I could answer you with none. I don't normally keep money on me because I don't like having loose change floating around whereas to have it all added up in one place. I know I'm not alone on this one. Instead I use my card, but at least I feel I have somewhat a type of ownership with my account with my card in my hand.

In the fall, Apple will be releasing the new OS for the mobile devices. One of the eye opening features is that you can actually synchronies your cards to your phone. That means when I want to make a purchase, all I've got to do it pull out my phone and allow it to become scanned. I won't even have the need to keep my cards in my pocket anymore, because it's virtually on my phone.

Another example are games and movies. We're seeing a lot more online streaming today. Clouding is become huge and it's really something I think we're going to see a lot more of in the future. Having all of our purchases on a corporation databases and accessing our "possessions" though their hands.

I got to go, but I could go on and on about this idea. Its just something to think about. We're loosing our freedom... willingly.

[Feudal]

TL;DR - Are we giving up freedom or buying convenience?

Interesting observation, and its pretty clear that by paying for the right to view...media or content - or whatever you want to call it, rather than buying and storing your own copy of it, we lose a degree of control. But, along with money, the things you listed are kind of abstract items, money has a physical representation (cash) but its really a concept more than a real thing... a film is similar, its a story which has been "rendered" through a medium, and then that representation can be burned to a disc, or streamed or broadcast...or whatever.

What is REALLY interesting is when you observe that a lot of corporations (and increasingly individuals) don't own the buildings, the carpets, the computers they use. Quite often companies own almost NOTHING that they use to produce the goods that they sell - they lease everything, and so aren't responsible for the capital costs and sometimes not even for the maintenance.

The justification is that it increases their flexibility and responsiveness to a changing environment, and they can change/cancel the leases to suit changes in the markets they are trading in change.

As consumers I think we gain the same advantages (so long as governments continue to act to support competition and a reasonable degree of choice, of course). So we trade a degree of control in exchange for convenience.

What I'd like to know though - do you think its a bad thing?

[peaceful_soul]

What I think really won't change the fact that our lifestyle is becoming more and more controlled by a digital simulation of ownership. We're giving up the freedom of control for a the pice of convenience. That is very true, but one should ask. Is it worth it? Is it worth knowing that what you have purchased dose not physically belong to you, but instead is nothing more than an unmaterialized construct of which you access on their terms.

It's a global monopoly empowered upon the control of ownership in a virtual reality. Tis the reason why we're seeing more and more business going down the drain. They can't keep up the price/demand ratio that an server can provide. As in truth, if you bought something digital... you simply baught data and nothing more.

[Feudal]

As in truth, if you bought something digital... you simply baught (bought) data and nothing more.

Well - actually, no.

You also helped to support the infrastructure that delivered that data to you - including; rewards for the original creators of the 'data' for their idea and work, a cut to the people who have marketed the content/media so that you could become aware of it, even a cut to the bank/payment management company who manage the financial exchange etc...

The cost you pay for a product is not just the cost of the product itself, but the costs incurred in creating it, delivering it and transaction costs and so on.

What I think really won't change the fact that our lifestyle is becoming more and more controlled by a digital simulation of ownership

Well...it won't if all you do is comment on it abstractly, and then roll over saying "but there's nothing I can do"! :-)

If you think its a bad thing, then tell us why, give us some alternatives, if you think that its not ALL bad, but you have some concerns, then share them. You original observation was interesting - but - so what?

Right now, you sound like you are trying to make some deep-sounding philosophical observation, which is perfectly ok (this is, of course, YOUR thread, and I'm not challenging your right to do that). But, your observation lacks any kind of point to it.

Is it worth it?

The fact that enough people are signing up for these kinds of service to make it BIG business suggests that it IS for them. By contrast there are plenty people who take full ownership of that exact same content for free by more legally questionable means.

Personally I think we're still in the early stages of the information age and consequently there will be all sorts of business models that are tried out and that will fail. This might well be one of them.

The REALLY interesting mental challenge, though, would be to translate this understanding of what is happening right now, into something that would create more useful/fair/ethical solutions to the problem of satisfying the need people seem to have for digital content.

[cbtslave4u2]

I see this thread moving into some kind of Matrix style conspiracy theory sooner or later.

I too have no money in my wallet as well as in my bank account. I don't have a debit card or credit card because I don't want them. Debit cards never tell you how much money is in your account after using it somewhere. You have to remember your balance and do the math yourself, dont forget to add in card usage fees or they will charge you a $35 overdraft fee!

Credit cards are stupid to have. What is there to buy that I have no problem paying interest on? Coke? Don't be late once or they jack up your interest to 30 percent and charge you a giant late fee! I own my own business so I issue myself a check and deposit it into my savings account and with draw however much I think I need to last a day or two.

Pay with your phone? Dumbest thing I have ever heard. Why pay with your phone when your card is in your pocket? Is it really that difficult to pull your card out? What do you do with your cards now? Throw them away? What if your phone is stolen? Now some thief has access to all your bank accounts. I doubt he steals that too lol.

Games, movies, music going digital? Music yes. Games and movies? Not so much. I haven't heard of a single game that you buy and exclusively have to access their server to play. The games in PlayStation Store are downloaded to your console then you can play. I'm not to sure about movies though because I don't use NetFlix.

Music going digital is the fault of millions of people illegally downloading songs for free online. How did they get online for free? Someone downloaded a cd they bought and posted it online.

Your arguement that since all of our things are digital and that we have to access them through their databases does that mean all of our posts belong to Depp (owner of this site and the database assuming he isn't using a 3rd party database)?

[Thepainvain]

Originally Posted by cbtslave4u2

Credit cards are stupid to have. What is there to buy that I have no problem paying interest on? Coke? Don't be late once or they jack up your interest to 30 percent and charge you a giant late fee! I own my own business so I issue myself a check and deposit it into my savings account and with draw however much I think I need to last a day or two.

Pay with your phone? Dumbest thing I have ever heard. Why pay with your phone when your card is in your pocket? Is it really that difficult to pull your card out? What do you do with your cards now? Throw them away? What if your phone is stolen? Now some thief has access to all your bank accounts. I doubt he steals that too lol.

Games, movies, music going digital? Music yes. Games and movies? Not so much. I haven't heard of a single game that you buy and exclusively have to access their server to play. The games in PlayStation Store are downloaded to your console then you can play. I'm not to sure about movies though because I don't use NetFlix.

First off: Some people need cards. I for example, can only get paid on my bank account. To have this account, I have to have a card for it. It's not a credit card, but still. It's also easy and convenient, since now, I can acces my money at almost all times. All I need to do is hiking down to the automat and get some of it.

Second: Actually, it's only logical. People always go for what's convinient and easy. People that have a smartphone, have it with them almost all the time. Putting their credit cards and such onto the phone makes it much more easy, since now you can leave your wallet at home and just take your phone with ya. I can see how many people would prefer that.

And in the case they get your phone: Actually, you're better off that way then if you lose your wallet or if it would get stolen. A phone still has a password, can be tracked, can be locked from outside. If they, however, get your wallet, your cards are all just on plain display to them. Of course, they have to find out the codes to the cards first, but basically it's the same as with a password for a phone. So, no matter if you have your cards in your phone or your wallet, you're screwed eitherway, if it would get stolen...

And third: There are games that are like that. Every single MMO that's out there, for example. Sure, you can cheat and play on hacked server, but you know, who does that...
If you play an MMO, how it's supposed to be played, you pay for being able to use the server and the game. You own nothing. Not even your characters, as the company could at any time delete them, should you play against their rules...

[ChocInVanilla]

First off, it is true that we are using cards, going into mobile payments instead of cash. However, this is rather much of a trade-off situation. We seek convenience, less hassle and the ability of technology has allowed us to achieve that. Take for instance, buying stuffs over the net. Technology had allowed us to buy with just a couple of clicks away and we get our stuffs mailed to us within days, or weeks. It is not a "giving up" situation. It is a situation where we seek trade our material possessions for convenience. It's a fair trade, isn't it? :x x; x;

However, we are walking into a net ourselves with these trade-offs. Think about it. Every thing is being charged for our digital transactions. We go through pay pal, pay pal gets a cut, bank gets a cut before the seller gets his share. In situations like amazon. she gets a cut off it too. We are paying extras for the convenience called "services" which has always been there. It's just that it is technology serving us instead of service staffs, for example, chefs/waiter/waitresses in restaurants.

Then we have movies, music, games going digital. To me, paying for them for the digital version or the "disc" version doesn't really matter because I am paying for their efforts to create it. It's like paying for a concert for the effort and hardwork they went through to present us such a wonderful piece. It is just like paying for the delicious food made by the chef.

To sum it up, we "give up" for a reason and everyone has theirs, I think..
:) ;) (; (:

[peaceful_soul]

It makes me happy to know this thread is getting a lot of well written replies. Thank you for time to sharing your thoughts. Rather you agree with more or not, the idea that we are loosing something such as material and gaining convince has already shown itself a literal observation.

Feudal, I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I love having my desires presented in front of me, tis why I've conformed to the technical revolution. I'm just trying to get people to critically think about the direction that the future has in store, and are we heading into a direction that we will loose the meaning of ownership and trade it in for possession?



"...does that mean all of our posts belong to Depp (owner of this site and the database assuming he isn't using a 3rd party database)" Yes, but not not you're thoughts and ideas. No one can take those from you, but they CAN be manipulated.



"$35 overdraft fee!" Join a credit union.

[Feudal]

Originally Posted by peaceful_soul

...are we heading into a direction that we will loose the meaning of ownership...

Well, that's a good question - but I think that we're actually becoming smarter about what part of "ownership" is useful to us.

The right to enjoy the benefits of digital media (film, music, computer programs) is the most important element of the transaction to most of us who buy music, films etc...(unless you collect old vinyl records, or classical books, where you could argue that its the object not the content which matters).

So, the focus shifts from a physical product to a more conceptual service. I am paying for the convenience of having my music (for example) available to me ANYWHERE I go (subject to network coverage!).

I own the right to hear my music wherever I am. That's a much bigger thing than only owning that right when I'm close to my record player!

BTW - This idea (the concept of ownership) is especially relevant on a site with some BDSM associations (Master/slave relationships are all about the dynamic of ownership after all, and it becomes very interesting when you start to analyse, who actually owns what part of whom!??). LOL