Wired: "Rentalship is the new ownership in the networked age"

Not much I need to add to this great Wired article on the collaborative consumption movement.  It's timely in that someone at Wired noticed the same thing that myself and many others are noticing - "We are entering the access economy."



I have grabbed a few of the more interesting portions of the article, but encourage you to read the original. (Emphasis added by me)

Now that collaborative spirit is spreading to all sorts of other industries as ubiquitous internet connections bring us together in creative new ways. The peer-to-peer model has lately moved from auction houses and online classifieds to car-sharing, jewellery lending, even online banking -- and each time it's cutting out a traditional incumbent. In an era when environmental concerns are making conspicuous consumption harder to justify, start-ups are targeting customers keener to pay for access to goods and services rather than actual physical ownership - and new web-based networks are letting all of us be both lenders and borrowers.

What matters in the new era is not your physical wealth, but your reputation. As long as you've built up a rep for trustworthiness, there's no reason you can't benefit from access to a wealth of products and services when you need them.  And that's good news whether you need to fund your next indie movie (try Kickstarter) or you need to relieve a girlfriend's anxiety about lacking a designer handbag to take to the ball (try Bag Borrow or Steal).

But aside from making the world a better place, what's in it for the GQ or Wired reader? Making or saving cash, for a start. "People renting out their driveways on Parkatmyhouse, their spare rooms on Airbnb, their cars on Whipcar are making thousands of pounds," Botsman says. "There are assets all around us with high 'idling capacity' that are essentially like an ATM machine. People use the extra cash for everything from offsetting car payments to taking the holiday they could not otherwise afford. Collaborative consumption is an easy way to become a micro-entrepreneur."

Link to original article from Wired magazine's UK edition.