On Sun, 20 Jul 2014, Dan Miller wrote: >
http://nyti.ms/1yI1ake > > If I'm mistaken, many of us have been pretty dismissive of Tom in the past, myself included. But I think this column gets to the heart of how mainstream columnists can and do > connect the dots between all of the headline grabbing surrounding the sharing economy and Big Data and the notion that each individual's personal info counts. > > The irony of course is that many of us won't use AirBnB thanks to heavy lifting they require in terms of validating our own IDs. Like uploading fotos etc. I think someone inclined to rent a room out wouldn't let that stop them, and as much as I care about my privacy I certainly understand the value/purpose to a validated identity in situations like this. What worries me a bit more is: Chesky answered. “I think now, for the younger generation, ownership is viewed as a burden. Young people will only want to own what they want responsibility for. And a lot of people my age don’t want responsibility for a car and a house and to have a lot of stuff everywhere. What I want to own is my reputation, because in this hyperconnected world, reputation will give you access to all kinds of things now. ... Your reputation now is like having a giant key that will allow you to open more and more doors. [Young people] today don’t want to own those doors, but they will want the key that unlocks them” — in order to rent a spare room, teach a skill, drive people or be driven. Are we truly at the point in society where no one ever loses their public reputation unfairly, where building a positive reputation is universally accessible and yet hard to game? Are we no longer at risk of confidence games (short or long), where referrals can be minted from thin air, or achievements claimed without any risk of fraud? These same "young people" also presumably don't want the burden of pensions, insurance, wills... but when cornered will fight for rent control, Medicare, Social Security, and regulations. I'm reminded of the discussion here about the Uber drivers working 10 hour days at a net wage that only barely covers the gas and wear/tear on the car. Or this, echoed by a comment on the NYT article by "SJ" of Wash DC: I find the phenomenon of things like AirBnB to be more of a sign of economic desperation than any kind of growing interconnectedness. It also represents a disconnected population willing to give up their residences to complete strangers for purely financial reasons. In other words, as the world becomes more and more cutthroat people are becoming more and more willing to sell every aspect of their lives. What's next. I do think there is an optimal state where the AirBNB hosts who truly do this for "more than financial reasons", and yet are able to do so profitably, are the vast majority; but as it expands in popularity if the focus is too much on inventory and scale, eventually it will go south, a la Ebay, and have difficulty recovering. Maybe that's the great cycle of these kinds of things, from niche to novelty to winning to scale to decay. Hope AirBnB doesn't speed through that too quickly, or burn too many people along the way. Brian