The Age of Access: The New Culture of Hypercapitalism Where All of Life is a Paid-For Experience

by Jeremy Rifkin. Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2000, ISBN 1585420182

Review by Drew Harrington <harrington@pacificu.edu>
University Librarian, Pacific University

So... ... ... ... .what will happen if "Civilization nails its time span to the moment and loses a sense of history and the future"? Jeremy Rifkin, a prolific social critic sometimes called the "Dark Prophet", cautions that our technology-based society now poses exactly that threat. Author of 14 or so books including "The End of Work" and "The Biotech Century", Rifkin has focused his latest work on how technology is rapidly leading us to "Hypercapitalism"—a state where all that we do, feel and experience is rented, and where we live only in the present. In a hypercapitalist economy, ownership and commitment are burdensome and prevent individuals and corporations alike from being able to change directions rapidly. It is an economy, Rifkin tells us, that values only efficiency and profit. Companies seek "weightlessness" by divesting themselves of real estate, by leasing facilities and equipment, outsourcing work units, and shrinking inventories. Individuals spend an ever-increasing portion of their incomes to purchase access rather than goods—leases, memberships, subscriptions and retainers. Rifkin asserts that this trend is growing and will eventually mean that virtually every experience outside of one's immediate family will be paid for. Further, it fosters a systemic dependency on a maintained level of income rather than on tangible assets. Lives based in convenience, instant gratification and commercially orchestrated experience do not foster critical thinking and evaluation skills. So, as Rifkin sees it, the wealthiest 1/5 of the world's population, as wired participants in the new economy, are rushing through life relatively unencumbered—allotting little or no time for reflection, and purchasing periodic access to shallow experiences that lack context. After establishing his concern over this developing trend that treats culture and human relationships as a market in a technologically savvy world, Rifkin draws a sharp contrast to those who are increasingly left behind. It may be surprising that not only do about 2/3rds of the world's people have no computer access to today's cyber-economy, but that 65% of the people in the world have never used a telephone. Whether or not readers accept Rifkin's predictions of hypercapitalism and the social and intellectual ills it may breed, his examination of the deepening plight of vast world populations who are "Living outside the Electronic Gates" is sobering. If, as seems to be the case, making one's way in the world and in today's economy demands access to technology, and if the world's "disenfranchised and dispossessed also are becoming the disconnected... ", the sheer weight of social ills may make it impossible for a cyber-economy to endure and flourish.

Drew Harrington can be reached at harrington@pacificu.edu.

The Age of Access: The New Culture of Hypercapitalism Where All of Life is a Paid-For Experience

May 2002

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