The Age of Access: How the Shift from Ownership to Access Is Transforming Capitalism: The New Culture of Hypercapitalism, Where All of Life Is a Paid-for Experience (Gebundene Ausgabe)

On reading many of the pages of Rifkin's work I have found myself enlightened, as if my vision and perception of our present world had gained a new touch of insight. But it is quite typical that when you are submerged by an experience you are not in the best condition to judge it objectively, to inventory, classify and minutely describe its processes: you look rather being 'lived' by than actually living the thing yourself!

Just this happens today when everybody is speaking about globalization, often following a sort of faddish inclination to appear up-to-date at least as far as words are concerned: but if you are really to develop an informed awareness of what you are talking about books like Rifkin's set a milestone in understanding. In my opinion Rifkin may act effectively, without no risky millenarian side-effects, both with readers already accustomed to the arguments of entrenched futurology (Toffler and Naisbitt are in my opinion just some steps behind Rifkin in terms of analytical and factual depth) and with the total newcomers to this kind of topics.

Rifkin's line of reasoning unfolds from a very definite and proven assumption: the new cultural capitalism rising on the horizon throughout the continents - with all the geocultural differences and contrasts to be taken into due account - ushers in a radical turn in the relationship of citizens-consumers to the sources of production on one side and in the relationship of citizens-consumers to goods and services on the other. In both aspects an ever-increasing shift from the notion of production/property to that of distribution/access is taking place.

In the industrial era and even in the first period of post-industrial society the marketplace was something still distinct from individual and communitarian experience: the marketplace was a vital and fundamental part of any citizen's or community's life but was perceived as a separate entity, influencing but not totally determining the facts of existence, especially those relating to the most intimate core of being. Psychic experience, in the wider meaning of intellectual, emotional and imaginal events making up the very fabric of individual and societal life was not the prevailing interest of a capitalism which kept considering material mass production its main objective.

The new capitalism (should we name it the third or the fourth wave, Mr Toffler?) is opening the door to marketable psychical goods: human experience at large becomes the target of global selling and a host of new ways of producing, presenting and distributing it are being designed and engineered by the new market operators. These ways may be different but are in the end characterised by a substantially uniform modality of fruition: access, not property! The new Erich Fromm of our days (hoping there will soon be one for it is badly needed!) will more aptly write a 'To access or to be', as the idea of possession is now better expressed by the possibility of getting temporarily in touch with an experience rather than directly and materially detaining 'something'. And where there is access, there you find gates, with gatekeepers guarding them and deciding what, when and how you should live your predefined life-windows: doesn't this sound like familiar semantics these days? Beware the Guardian Angels!

Rifkin is not easily satisfied by abstract assertions and his book is full of examples of what he says. A lot of pages are devoted to bringing evidence before the eyes of the reader and here and there you feel overwhelmed by factual demonstration. But soon you realize that each example adds an important piece to the overall mosaic of explanation, until a complete and convincing picture takes shape in your mind.

The last chapter is particularly rich in insight and reveals in my opinion a depth of discrimination which should be advantageously absorbed and fruitfully applied by all kinds of new economy actors, be they concerned directly with the marketplace or indirectly, thru politics and policies in the higher sense of these terms. Rifkin says that we need an ecology of culture and capitalism if we are to save a global human civilisation from the self-destructive impulses of the new mode of production. The market is in fact something kept alive and trustworthy by culture and creative continuity with the past of human experience: civic and cultural traditions as tangible signs of social identity are the stuff which supports the sense of reciprocal trust and well-rooted community indispensable to the effective functioning of the market. By destroying local cultural and civic traditions with the unconfessed aim of forming a standardized global consumer society the new capitalism is putting at risk the same ground on which it is trying to build its lasting triumphs. Human experience cannot be fragmented and sold to society as experiential frames accessed thru predefined portals: this would simply transform the inherent vitality of human culture into a mediocre jam of insignificance, meaningful communication and links among human beings would gradually turn into mutual mistrust and violence and so, while Communism died by too much failure, Capitalism might eventually disappear by too much success. Believe me: this book is a must!

Rifkin hat zwar ein interessantes Werk fabriziert, aber spannend hat er dies nicht vollbracht. Es wäre ohne weiteres möglich ein Buch mit demselben Inhalt auf nur 100 Seiten zu schreiben. Mit anderen Worten, er wiederholt eine Idee immer und immer wieder über 3 bis 5 Seiten. Daher rate ich jedem, der nicht wirklich an seinen Zukunftsvisionen teilhaben möchte, ab dieses Buch zu kaufen.