It has been a consistent thesis of mine that the Internet Revolution, which I believe has only just begun, will prove to be in the long run just as transformative as the Industrial Revolution. In other words, it’s not only that we would become more productive; it’s that society as we know it would be fundamentally changed. How, though, hasn’t been entirely clear: if the industrial revolution moved us from subsistence farming in the countryside to factories in cities, where might we go next?
I increasingly believe that it is the sharing economy that is beginning to reveal the answer: a world of commodified trust has significantly less need for much of the infrastructure of modern society, including inefficient sectors like hotels whose primary differentiator is trust, along with the regulatory state dedicated to enforcing that trust. On the other hand, this brave new world has brand new holes through which people can fall: those who have lost trust, or do not have the means to build it. I’m no crazy libertarian; quite the opposite in fact: we need a significantly stronger safety net and a judicial system predicated on arbitration.
The nature of assets changes as well, and not just hotels: as more houses — and rooms — are offered as a service, the definition of ownership begins to shift. This will clearly first play out in automobiles: the long-run promise of Uber is a world where few own cars and few cars sit idle. This will impact not just auto-makers but insurers, dealers, repair shops, and more. More profoundly, it will affect people. We will be less tied down, more willing to move, especially if our work becomes just as transactional as our possessions. And that, ultimately, will change the way we relate to each other, just as the shift from the small knit community in the countryside to the chaos of the city upended everything we thought we knew about how individuals, communities, and governments interacted.
Just because the future is coming into focus, though, doesn’t mean the road there will be smooth. Once again it is Paris giving us a glimpse of the convulsions along the way: taxi drivers upending cars, setting them on fire, terrifying passengers, all in the pursuit of a world as it was. And for now it seems they have won the battle: the French government is taking action to curtail UberPop. The war, though, is only just beginning, and one desperately hopes said reference to war — in contrast to the climax of the Industrial Revolution — remains figurative.
