Immaterialism

I was in Kochi recently, and was quite happy to find Uber there! About four years ago, a similar experience led me to write about how malls create a kind of homogeneity across cities. This is probably an advanced version of that thought, because I felt as though these were baby steps towards living in the cloud. If the apps (services) I use become available across geographies, how long would it take before location became irrelevant?

“Of course geography is relevant. I have a home in Bangalore, what do I do with that?” leads me to the real point of this post – ownership. TC had a fantastic (guest) post sometime back (by Tom Goodwin) titled “The Battle is for the Customer Interface“. Quoting from the first paragraph – Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. The post, of course, moves on to the business impact of this, but I felt that it is absolutely applicable in a personal context.

When I think of it, ‘owning’ as a culture seems to have been ingrained into my psyche. But I can already see it changing. Technology is accelerating the ‘Why buy when you can rent’ and ‘Sharing Economy’ narratives. I also think that economics will begin weighing in very soon. As business environments continue to go into a state of flux, owning things, especially high value ones, may just not be a prudent way to live. Also, as lifespans increase, and the nature of jobs change, people might not even want to stick to a specific geography and might see ownership as a hindrance to this freedom of movement. On an aside, this is also in line with the changing nature of relationships I had written about earlier.

In the immediate scenario, I see the attachment to our mobile device as the harbinger of an inevitable movement of our lives into the cloud. Contacts, media and apps (with the data) are pretty much there and as we move forward in time, other things we thought could never go beyond the physical realm will get there as well. (I am reasonably sure of seeing a quickly degradable 3D printed house for mass use in the next 10 years) While minimalism does bring about simplicity, I am not really sure if it can be that simple. As our attachment to one set of things wane, and we transcend, I have to wonder about the new kind of bonds that we will form – human and otherwise.