@onlyonepinman the move towards services over products is absolutely true. Where we need to be a little wary is inventing ulterior motives to reasons for things happening. If you invent somebody else’s motivation for something, and then get angry about it (and, worst still, try to encourage other people to get angry about it) you’re at the dangerous end of the conspiracy theory rabbit hole.
Sure, speculate all you like.
But I have no truck when opinions are presented as facts, and speculation as certainty.
Some things are true. We’re seeing a move towards services and virtualisation. There’s also reason for that – but the driving factor? The thing that was the initial motivation in the first place? Money. Making more money. You could argue this even this statement is just speculation – but you can also think back to when it all started (as has been pointed out, some of us were there). Multi-national corporations were driving virtualisation as a means for higher profits – the conspiracy theories about why came later.
Some things are true even if we don’t understand why.
And some things are simply not true no matter how much someone insists.
And some things that are true are presented as an opinion, when it shouldn’t be open to debate. An example:
This – for me – is the same as a classic “conspiracy theory”.
Both people are claiming to be correct, and both insist that their view on the world is the absolute truth. But this is wrong.
Somebody wrote a number nine on the floor. Or a number six. The value that the figure on the floor represents is known – it has a true value, and the person who put it there knows what this truth is. The clowns pointing at it and arguing “this is the intent that someone else had because it fits the narrative as I see things” are failing to do the work of finding out the truth. The truth does not change because of their point of view. The truth is fixed. It’s either a six or it’s a nine – there’s no arguing it another way simply because of a different opinion.
When Napster was bought out and became a “legitimate” platform, it was because it had the potential to generate a lot of money by distributing music cheaply and easily. It wasn’t originally created to keep all your music “in the cloud” and “control your digital assets” (originally you had to download and store your own mp3 collections).
So the initial motivation for virtualising music wasn’t a conspiracy to control our lives, our way of thinking, or influence our behaviour. To suggest otherwise is to invent a motivation that wasn’t present at the time, and apply it retrospectively.
Companies like Amazon don’t pull products because it fits some over-arching “strategy” – they do it to remove barriers to trade and make more money. They don’t care what people like or don’t like, they just care about putting what they think they want in front of them, so they will pay money for it.
I completely agree that services instead of products is “a thing”. And it’s not an improvement.
But that’s because I’m from a generation that has always expected to collect and value assets.
If I were 30 years younger and had only ever known the “typical millennial lifestyle” of renting stuff and never expecting to own anything, I’m not sure I’d be quite so hung up about the change.
