You will own nothing and be happy.
That’s the 2016 statement from the World Economic Forum that they’ve been frantically trying to send down the memory hole
But despite their efforts to scrub it, it’s a statement they actually made, a prediction for life in 2030 that can be found in a video in the WayBack Machine.
And in varied ways that 2030 utopia is advancing.
A few years back there was a prediction of a day when we would not own physical copies of movies or music.
That day is here.
Joining the CDs they jettisoned five years ago, Best Buy is in the process of removing physical DVDs and Blu-ray discs from their stores.
I don’t know about you, but at our house, we rarely play physical DVDs anymore. Or CDs. But we stream things a lot — Amazon Prime movies and videos, movies, and music on YouTube.
Yet, we’ve got some decades-old movies on VHS, for which we no longer have a player.
Do you prefer physical media over digital media?
We like them, but so far, I haven’t been able to bring myself to pay money (even just a few dollars) to stream a movie I already own on VHS!
Just can’t do it! Can’t!
Now as Best Buy gets rid of physical inventories of DVDs and Blu-ray discs, it will make a big change in the appearance of a Best Buy store.
The plan, hatched early in 2023, is to have physical copies of movies out of the stores in the first part of this year.
“To state the obvious, the way we watch movies and TV shows is much different today than it was decades ago,” a Best Buy representative told Variety.
“Making this change gives us more space and opportunity to bring customers new and innovative tech for them to explore, discover and enjoy.”
I guess.
Some, as reported in The Verge, may miss the physical act of pawing through discs — much like some delight in the pleasures of holding and smelling books.
But such is progress.
And, to be fair, streaming immediately provides a wide range of selections.
But it’s one more thing that has become a service I consume, rather than a good that I own.
That concept has extended to other things, such as software that one is not really buying, and of course, there’s been the controversy over the right to repair owned products given their internal proprietary software.
Also, not to go all conspiracy theory on you (why not? everything else is), what happens when one of those movies (or songs or Kindle books) is deemed politically incorrect and Those Who Know Best deem it must be retroactively edited?
Or removed?
I’m being paranoid, perhaps. I need to relax — nothing wrong with progress, right?
But there remains that echo of “You will own nothing and be happy.”
Which presumably won’t even leave me with a lawn to yell about.
