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Possessions-as-a-Service? No, can't see it taking off. In all seriousness, as others have noted, I see this as a rather damning comment on how badly human cont

Possessions-as-a-Service? No, can't see it taking off. In all seriousness, as others have noted, I see this as a rather damning comment on how badly human contact is getting abstracted away to businesses more and more. It's rather sad that people no longer feel able to just talk to others without some organisation to mediate.

ball_of_lint 9y ago
What about things that aren't owned by anyone in your social group, and are too expensive/rarely used to justify buying yourself? Say the chocolate fountain: no one really needs it bad enough to buy one, but if you can sell access to one for some small fraction of that cost it could become a reasonable expense. A similar logic can be applied to a table saw, or to a dremel, or to a soldering iron. This service removes circumstance and adds reliability to borrowing. And maybe it does reflect something sad about socialization today, but that doesn't mean it isn't useful or good.
- ghaff 9y ago
  There are rental places for that kind of thing. The chocolate fountain and table saw are good examples. But soldering iron? $15 on Amazon. Dremel is more but is actually a good example of a tool you'll find use for doing lots of things. (And you tend to chew up cutting discs etc. if you borrow so you'll probably need to buy parts in any case.)
erikpukinskis 9y ago
> It's rather sad that people no longer feel able to just talk to others without some organisation to mediate. The alternative, which is dying, is social norms. How do you coordinate large groups of people without communications technology? Norms. You make special hats, and use violence to teach people that you don't fuck with someone in a hat like that. You teach women that they can have an opinion, but if a man disagrees, that trumps their opinion. We think of these as archaic culture, but we needed them for wide scale social control. Now we have technology that allows for instantaneous communication over long distances. So we don't strictly need the norms anymore. And stories come out about how this norm violated such-and-such human right. So it's good that they go. But then there's a vacuum. How do I know whether to be aggressive or subservient around this woman? There used to be a clear answer, now there's not. You lament technological intermediation in these matters, but the truth is we need something. Either all women are subservient, or there is some system that helps us know. The goal is software for consensual interaction. Do you have consent to borrow my Kubota? If you break it and I can't expand my pond, and my family dies, then you probably didn't have my consent. If I am king, then no, you didn't have my consent because I am king. I have the king hat. And I can kill you. Your consent doesn't matter. The path we are on is that all of us every day write tiny softwares that help those around us understand the conditions of our consent. Helps you understand the extent to which my livelihood depends on your actions. Helps me understand the same about you. So that, if we are good people, we know how to behave. Without resorting to "that one has the decider hat". Lamenting the loss of the old way is lamenting a system where nonconsensual things happened all the time. Notably, once we have the new consent tech, property laws are obselete.
remir 9y ago
It depends. My father goes to an evangelical church and there's a lot of cooperation. People help each other for free, lend things, fix things for free, etc...

ball_of_lint 9y ago

What about things that aren't owned by anyone in your social group, and are too expensive/rarely used to justify buying yourself? Say the chocolate fountain: no one really needs it bad enough to buy one, but if you can sell access to one for some small fraction of that cost it could become a reasonable expense. A similar logic can be applied to a table saw, or to a dremel, or to a soldering iron. This service removes circumstance and adds reliability to borrowing. And maybe it does reflect something sad about socialization today, but that doesn't mean it isn't useful or good.

ghaff 9y ago
There are rental places for that kind of thing. The chocolate fountain and table saw are good examples. But soldering iron? $15 on Amazon. Dremel is more but is actually a good example of a tool you'll find use for doing lots of things. (And you tend to chew up cutting discs etc. if you borrow so you'll probably need to buy parts in any case.)

erikpukinskis 9y ago

> It's rather sad that people no longer feel able to just talk to others without some organisation to mediate. The alternative, which is dying, is social norms. How do you coordinate large groups of people without communications technology? Norms. You make special hats, and use violence to teach people that you don't fuck with someone in a hat like that. You teach women that they can have an opinion, but if a man disagrees, that trumps their opinion. We think of these as archaic culture, but we needed them for wide scale social control. Now we have technology that allows for instantaneous communication over long distances. So we don't strictly need the norms anymore. And stories come out about how this norm violated such-and-such human right. So it's good that they go. But then there's a vacuum. How do I know whether to be aggressive or subservient around this woman? There used to be a clear answer, now there's not. You lament technological intermediation in these matters, but the truth is we need something. Either all women are subservient, or there is some system that helps us know. The goal is software for consensual interaction. Do you have consent to borrow my Kubota? If you break it and I can't expand my pond, and my family dies, then you probably didn't have my consent. If I am king, then no, you didn't have my consent because I am king. I have the king hat. And I can kill you. Your consent doesn't matter. The path we are on is that all of us every day write tiny softwares that help those around us understand the conditions of our consent. Helps you understand the extent to which my livelihood depends on your actions. Helps me understand the same about you. So that, if we are good people, we know how to behave. Without resorting to "that one has the decider hat". Lamenting the loss of the old way is lamenting a system where nonconsensual things happened all the time. Notably, once we have the new consent tech, property laws are obselete.

remir 9y ago

It depends. My father goes to an evangelical church and there's a lot of cooperation. People help each other for free, lend things, fix things for free, etc...