dematerialized_distribution.md 6.8 KB
title: "Dematerialized Distribution: The Psychology of Renting Art on the Web" date: 2018-06-21
category: Essay
We are renting more and more of the media we consume. Rather than buying books, CDs, or DVDs, we access media via streaming services. In other words, we have largely dematerialized distribution of content: we no longer need to move physical objects that have information encoded within them. The value proposition for a customer/user is that you get on-demand access to an enormous catalogue of content without needing to hunt down and store great bodies of plastic or paper.
The streaming model brings a great deal of choice and convenience, but what are the consequences of this model of content distribution, of having everything at your fingertips but owning nothing? I want to examine 3 effects of non-material distribution of content: increased volume of behavioral data about users; reduced social potency of media; and individual disempowerment via rentsmanship.
Increased volume of behavioral data about users
In the past, if you used a credit card to purchase something, or kept a subscription with a company like Blockbuster or Columbia House, your purchasing decisions would be available for aggregation and analysis. Credit card companies might see a wide swath of your purchase decisions, learning what sorts of books you like to read, movies you like to watch, places you like to go for vacation, the types of hotels you like, the sorts of entertainment events you attended, where you buy groceries, how frequently you make large ticket purchases, how often your payments bounce, etc. Huge, incredible amounts of information are available about you just by looking at your spending habits. And this information is being used to generate profiles of you in order to manipulate you into buying this or that gadget, to attend a certain conference, or to connect with an old friend. Your interactions are largely mediated via money: you pay for almost everything you do. These payments leave a data-rich trail that is picked up and processed in all sorts of ways. The web is full of articles and tutorials detailing how marketers and salespeople can use this information to influence consumers' behavior; I won't do them the service of linking to them from here, but a quick search of "how to influence consumers" or "using data to drive sales" or similar will yield you plenty of actionable reading.
In the present, with the use of content streaming services, the profiling machine is vastly more potent. Ten years ago, Credit Card Company X may have known about all of the books you purchased in the last calendar year, the order in which you purchased them, the number your purchased per transaction, where you bought them, what time of the month you tended to buy books, etc. Today, Media Subscription Company Y, which provides you with an interface to their catalogue, knows which books you read at which time of day, how long you spend with each category of book broken down by hour of the day/day of the week/month, when you are likely to flip out to the web for clarification or distraction, which passages you highlight, which pages you pause on or come back to, which kinds of books tend to lead you to which kinds of web sites, the likelihood that you finish the books that you start, the frequency with which you refer to the dictionary, and on and on. And these same types of data points can also be collected for your TV, film, audiobook, and music habits.
While your purchasing behavior tells the story of how you interact with the wider world, your real-time behavioral data tells the story of how you behave in your own home. When you don't own the object of art, the book, CD, or DVD, but use instead a web service to access the story/song/film each time you want to read/hear/watch it, you feed into a data collection service every time you consume your media of choice, and the profile about you becomes richer, more accurate, and more valuable.
Reduced social potency of media
The function of media is to connect people. The word 'media' means 'something between'. Films, books, and music bring people together. They give people a shared frame of reference for understanding the world and the people in it, and they provide occasion to gather together, such as at concerts and movie theaters.
When we possess the object of art, the novel or the record, we can pass it to our friends and family to read or hear. We can hand them the thing that has impacted us, allowing them to experience it, thereby tightening our bond, deepening our shared context. You could lend a co-worker the DVD of a film you really enjoyed on Friday, and you could discuss it the following Monday at the proverbial water cooler.
If you are in possession of the physical good, you can give someone else access to content that was meaningful to you; when you rent your media from some company, you cannot do this. You do not have an object to hand to your spouse or sister. You cannot help them access the content, other than by telling them about it. If you were to try and pass your account credentials to a loved one, you would probably find yourself violating the terms of service.
When content distribution is dematerialized, particularly when the 'ownership' model is temporary renting (rather than DRM-free downloads, for example), we lose a great deal of media's social potency.
Individual disempowerment via rent relations
Finally, the model of renting or leasing your content on an on-demand basis is disempowering to the individual. When you own a good, you are legally free to do with the object and content what you wish, provided, of course, that your use does not harm others, infringe on copyright, etc. When you rent your media, you are bound by the terms of service of the platform. You must do what your told. If you do not abide by their rules of conduct, their preferred modes of ingestion, your access to the platform and its riches will be revoked. If you spend time cultivating a rich library of books or films, and then slip up in some way, you may well lose access to that library.
Streaming services put you in an asymmetrical relationship with a larger, more powerful entity that can terminate your service when it deems necessary or appropriate to do so. You must be a well-behaved user, following the edicts laid out in some TOS document. This, I argue, weakens the spirit, discourages exploration and curiosity, and turns us into passive consumers to be force-fed whatever content the algorithms ingesting our purchasing/behavioral data decide will be most compelling or click-worthy for us this afternoon.
Media streaming services take the object of art out of our hands, makes us easier to profile, makes us subservient, and reduces the social value of media. While there is convenience to be gained from on-demand access to media, there is much more to be lost. Buy books.