Ownership: December 08, 1997 issue of New Thinking

December 08, 1997 New Thinking:
Ownership

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December 08, 1997

Ownership

By Gerry McGovern

Is ownership important to you? If it is, then how do you feel about not owning any of the software you use?

Do you own a house and/or some land? If you do, and if you happen to live in Ireland, then that doesn’t mean that you can do just what you want with your house and land. You can’t build on it willy nilly. You have to get planning permission. If it’s zoned for residential purposes, then you can’t just establish a factory or shop there.

Ownership is an interesting idea. Irish people have a particular obsession with ownership because of our past history of being enslaved by the British Empire. It has a strong symbolic import for an Irish person to say that we own our home or land, and for that reason Irish home ownership is among the highest in the world.

In the world of cyberspace, ownership has a very different complexion. We exist within a world where space is essentially endless and can be endlessly replicated and expanded. Our tools are software programs and they can be duplicated again and again at little cost.

Today, nobody owns the Internet (although the big telcos could probably lay reasonable claim). Nobody with sense is that interested in owning the Internet. Because the issue, from a social and commercial viewpoint, is not ownership, but rather benefit and use.

It is not necessary to own something so as to achieve benefit and use from it. Ownership is a particularly Industrial Age idea. Benefit and use is an idea that thrives within a digital age Internet environment.

Amazon, which claims to be ‘Earth’s Largest Bookstore’, is an example of an organization that seems to maximize benefit out of things it doesn’t own. Now, Amazon claims that it has 2.5 million titles. But does it actually own 2.5 million titles? Hardly. Is there some big warehouse where it stores 2.5 million titles? Unlikely. In fact, calling itself a bookstore only tells part of the story.

As far as I can see, Amazon very often acts as a junction box, connecting people who want to buy books with people (publishers, distributors) who want to sell them. If Amazon existed in the ‘physical’ world it wouldn’t be a bookstore; it would be the street where you find many bookstores collected.

Dell computers doesn’t ‘own’ or store its monitors. When it gets an order for a computer, it sends the order for the particular monitor requested to the monitor manufacturer. The manufacturer gets the monitor delivered, not Dell, thus saving Dell quite a bit of money.

At the end of the day, it is not that important to own things. What is important is the benefit and use you achieve. The Internet is the great connector, and those who wish to maximize benefit and use, should maximize its capacity to connect.

You have something. I have something. If you let me use your thing. If I let you use my thing. If one hundred or one thousand others do likewise, then we may create a powerful synergy of use and benefit.

On the Internet there is ‘gold’ to be found in connecting, in networking. In the sharing of ownership so as to achieve mutual benefit and use.

Gerry McGovern

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It is not necessary to own something so as to achieve benefit and use from it.