Product Description

Visionary activist and author Jeremy Rifkin exposes the real stakes of the new economy, delivering "the clearest summation yet of how the Internet is really changing our lives" (The Seattle Times).

Imagine waking up one day to find that virtually every activity you engage in outside your immediate family has become a "paid-for" experience. It's all part of a fundamental change taking place in the nature of business, contends Jeremy Rifkin. After several hundred years as the dominant organizing paradigm of civilization, the traditional market system is beginning to deconstruct. On the horizon looms the Age of Access, an era radically different from any we have known.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #266627 in Books
• Published on: 2001-03-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From Amazon.co.uk
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: The New Culture of Hypercapitalism, Where All of Life is a Paid-For Experience. 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, Amazon.com

From Publishers Weekly
In his latest synthesis of business analysis and academic philosophizing, Rifkin (The End of Work, The Biotech Century, etc.) argues that we are in the midst of a new age in which "concepts, ideas and images--not things--are the real items of value" and where "the purchase of lived experiences becomes the consummate commodity." In the book's first half, Rifkin contends that ownership of property has become increasingly devalued. Today's companies avoid amassing physical capital, which can later prove "an albatross" that prevents them from keeping up with rapid technological advances. Instead, they prefer to "outsource ownership," contracting third parties to provide and maintain equipment. This trend combines with others, such as the proliferation of service relationships, to put more emphasis on access than ownership, heralding a time when what companies sell will be human experience itself and all cultural activities will be commodified. In the book's second half, Rifkin shows how "experience industries"--such as travel and entertainment--are coming to dominate the new global economy. "More and more of the global cultural sphere--its natural wonders, cathedrals, museums, palaces, parks, rituals, festivals--is being siphoned off into the marketplace," he says, where it serves as a backdrop "for enacting paid-for cultural experiences" that is divorced from historical context. As in Rifkin's earlier works, the author asserts the truth of his ideas in considerable detail without offering much supporting evidence, leaving readers either to believe him or not. Even so, his larger historical and social perspective and lack of technological boosterism is refreshing. Agent: Jim Stein. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
The author of 14 previous books, including The End of Work and The Biotech Century, Rifkin is a noted social critic and president of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington, DC. In this important work, he examines the trends that underlie our transition from a service-based economy to one based on the convergence of commerce and culture. Specifically, he notes a broad range of structural changes, including the shift from markets to networks and from ownership to access, the reduced value of physical property and the rise of intellectual property, and the increased marketing of human relationships where culture has become the ultimate commercial resource. His most riveting assertion is that these developments are in sharp contrast to the situation in the rest of the world, in which, as Rifkin states, over 50 percent of the people have never made a phone call, much less been connected to the emerging global information network. Recommended for both public and academic libraries.
-Norman B. Hutcherson, Kern Cty. Lib., Bakersfield, CA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

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Indeed an outstanding analysis of capitalist transitions. Very infomred study of how the mode of reproduction in capitalist society is redefining itself and who the agents of change are.
A must read for all students of politcal and social sciences; a strong recommednation for everyone who wants to step back and reflect on where we are heading and how things got rolling. The only short-coming I see, is that Rifkin strangely avoids building on marxist thought, hardly any references and it seems he tried to "skip" Marxism in an effort to stay popular amongst a largely US readership. Still, a most important book, any current day social researcher and political analyst should make this book a key reference point.

Good and Valuable Book
I liked the book very interesting description of the times we are living in. Helps understand the economic tendencies that are actually occurring around us. I enjoy reading it!

Spectacular analysis of today's hyper culture and commerce.
Your life is part of a larger drama. As you grow up you are presented with numerous options as to the character you will play. What attributes should your character have, what personality traits, what reputation, what should your character strive to be? Will you take on different personas at work, in social situations, in simulated environments? The choice is up to you, but your choices are presented by advertisers who seek to steer you in a particular direction and supply you with the props to act out your character of choice.

Once you acquire the physical props needed to reinforce your character (which have limited revenue potential for the companies supplying them), you need to compliment your props with experiences. Maybe you want to play a distinguished individual; one who lives in an exclusive golf community with others of similar status and means. Your character of choice has the newest cars, the latest gadgets, and adheres to the norms of others playing similar roles.

You own little if anything and consume most everything as a service - you lease your car, despite "owning your home" you have to pay for all kinds of memberships and fees to keep up the act. You script your social circles and cultural experiences. The majority of your relationships are based on monetary exchange and are pre planned. You are able to purchase cultural experiences based on what market research has determined you want to experience. You are presented with that which others have determined you want to see and will pay the most to experience. Your experiences don't reflect reality, as it exists in nature, but the "reality" which you want to, and think, should exist.

If you have enough financial resources you can rent the exact character you want to play, buy all the necessary props, and engage in all the appropriate cultural experiences. Everyone will treat you just the way you want to be treated. You'll be able to script your whole life. Will your relationships be built on trust, empathy, compassion and other genuine human emotions? Does any of this matter? Is there any difference between a life where everything is a paid for experience and one where it is not? Is this much ado about nothing? That's up to you to decide. Jeremy vividly describes how such scenarios may affect you.

Another fundamental issue in "The Age of Access" is the private ownership and control of public assets and natural resources. Should a private entity be allowed to claim exclusive ownership of the radio spectra over which all sorts of communications are broadcast? Should a biotech company be able to patent (and therefore have exclusive use) of a particular gene that has always existed in nature but has only recently been discovered and put to a particular use? Should companies be able to have patents on the very building blocks that make up life on Earth? Should they be able to patent things that make up your body? When it comes to property rights, where is the line between private property and the right of humanity to share in and access the natural wealth of the planet?

Monsanto, through the development of "Terminator seeds", has already shown how such patents and associated biological tampering may be used for the financial gain of a few to the detriment of the food supply of the world.

[Terminator seeds were developed by Monsanto as a way to claim intellectual property rights and revenue from farmers. The seeds are bio-engineered to be sterile so that instead of simply harvesting seeds at the end of one crop season to be used for the next, the farmer would have no choice but to ante up to Monsanto for seeds for next years crop.]

The parallel is made between cultural diversity and biodiversity. As the world's natural resources are depleted, can we continue our current lifestyles, our massive energy consumption? Many other works contend the answer is no. Rifkin compares biodiversity to cultural diversity. Can capital markets continue to operate if the very social fabric and trust on which they are built is transformed into continuum of paid for experiences?

"The Age of Access" is brilliant. It raises issues that will become more and more important as we move forward into the age of "hyper-capitalism". Will it matter if your life becomes a series of subscriptions and paid for experiences? Should any private entity be able to claim control over things like genes or radio spectra or should they remain in the public domain for all to use? Is it in anyone's interest for corporations like McDonalds's, Dunkin Doughnuts, Starbucks, and others to steamroll local cultures and business outside of the US in the pursuit of profit? Rifkin presents scenarios that address these and many other questions. You may or may not agree with issues and perspectives in the book but its one book you can't afford to pass up.