The Age of Access: The New Culture of Hypercapitalism

by Jeremy Rifkin

Overview

Visionary activist and author Jeremy Rifkin exposes the real stakes of the new economy, delivering "the clearest summation yet of how the Internet is really changing our lives" (The Seattle Times).

Imagine waking up one day to find that virtually every activity you engage in outside your immediate family has become a "paid-for" experience. It's all part of a fundamental change taking place in the nature of business, contends Jeremy Rifkin. After several hundred years as the dominant organizing paradigm of civilization, the traditional market system is beginning to deconstruct. On the horizon looms the Age of Access, an era radically different from any we have known.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101666616
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/05/2001
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	809 KB

About the Author

One of the most popular social thinkers of our time, Jeremy Rifkin is the bestselling author of The European Dream, The Hydrogen Economy, The Age of Access, The Biotech Century, and The End of Work. A fellow at the Wharton School's Executive Education Program, he is president of The Foundation on Economic Trends in Bethesda, MD.

Table of Contents

Part I	The Next Capitalist Frontier
Chapter 1	Entering the Age of Access	3
Chapter 2	When Markets Give Way to Networks	16
Chapter 3	The Weightless Economy	30
Chapter 4	Monopolizing Ideas	56
Chapter 5	Everything Is a Service	73
Chapter 6	Commodifying Human Relationships	96
Chapter 7	Access as a Way of Life	114
Part II	Enclosing the Cultural Commons
Chapter 8	The New Culture of Capitalism	137
Chapter 9	Mining the Cultural Landscape	168
Chapter 10	A Postmodern Stage	186
Chapter 11	The Connected and the Disconnected	218
Chapter 12	Toward an Ecology of Culture and Capitalism	235
	Notes	267
	Bibliography	291
	Index	304

Editorial Reviews

"One basic economic rule, as Mr. Rifkin points out, has not changed since Roman times: caveat emptor. In the brave new wired world, it will be ever more difficult for the buyer to beware of technology speeding forward in nanoseconds, controlled by global giants." —The New York Times

"Rifkin's vision of corporate capitalism dematerializing into webs of access of networks of 'virtual' power is startling and compelling." —William Greider, author of One World, Ready or Not

From the Publisher