Technology

To take the title literally: people have stopped wanting to own their shit since the advent of the flush toilet. In the days of the privee, you'd own your shit, you'd muck it out and maybe do something of value with it. But with the flush toilet, your shit belongs to someone else, they deal with it.

In the digital services economy 'your shit' could be considered to include your profile information, what do you use, where do you go, when do you do it, how often, how much do you pay? That 'digital shit' has about as much value as what you flush down the toilet, individually, but combined into representative market statistics it's digital gold - predictive information about what will sell, how much of it will sell at what prices, where and when.

Personally, I'd trade my 'digital shit' for advertising. Yes, you can track me, if I don't have to listen to, see, read or receive ANY marketing materials that I do not specifically actively seek for myself. Unfortunately, that's not the way the current models work and there's about zero incentive for the advertising world to change.

As for "streaming" vs "owning" digital content, streaming is the ultimate form of tracking - besides the hook of making you pay per view or listen or read - a huge value (to the sellers) in streaming is that tracking is built-in 100% effective.

Then we can devolve into the world of "durable consumer goods" being led by fast-fashion straight down the toilet. Own a car? Actually maintain it and keep it running for 30, 50 or 100 years? Inconceivable in the world of corporate profit maximization. That's as backwards as clothing that you buy once and wear for decades, mending and tailoring as needed.