At the Imec Technical forum held in conjunction with SEMICON West last month in San Francisco, Luc Van den hove, imec president and CEO, painted a future of the “happy many” served by intelligent IoT devices. That’s in contrast with life circa 1900, when the “happy few” residing in mansions and manors were served by the “unhappy many” housekeepers, cooks, butlers, chauffeurs, and other servants.
Van den hove presented compelling evidence for his prediction, as I outlined here. But there’s another aspect to today’s high-tech-driven society that’s worth considering. Perhaps with the so-called sharing economy we have just made it easier for the happy few to find the unhappy many.
Natasha Singer in the New York Times writes, “I have trouble with the sharing economy. Ditto the peer economy, the people economy, and the collaborative economy.” She notes that she has no problem with Lyft, Uber, TaskRabbit, Airbnb, or Instacart. “What I find problematic is the terminology itself and how it frames technology-enabled transactions as if they were altruistic or community endeavors,” she adds.
When you list a room on Airbnb, for example, you’re not proposing to share that room—you’re hoping to rent it. Your Uber driver doesn’t really hope to share a ride with you but rather be paid for it.
This may seem like a trivial distinction, but the distinction may matter as governments become increasingly involved in the app-mediated service sector. “Against the backdrop of possible regulation,” writes Singer, “egalitarian-sounding words like ‘sharing’ and ‘partner’ distance startups, linguistically at least, from the traditionally regulated industries they seek to displace.”
Further, she quotes Alex Rosenblat of research center Data & Society as saying the sharing-economy language co-opts service providers into their own disempowerment.
Some legislators, Singer writes, have avoided referring to the “sharing economy”—substituting “on-demand” or “gig economy” instead. And the Associated Press Stylebook recommends “ride booking” in place of “ride sharing.” She quotes Stylebook co-editor David Minthorn as saying it seems inaccurate or euphemistic to apply the term “sharing” in the context of a commercial enterprise.
Make no mistake—I’m in favor of the app-driven on-demand economy. But we should be precise when we talk about it so that emerging regulations don’t relegate service providers to the ranks of the “unhappy many” serfs characteristic of previous centuries.
On a related note, the Wall Street Journal reports that companies are developing apps that you can use to schedule doctors to make house calls. Writes Melinda Beck, “Such ventures are fueled by a confluence of trends, including growing interest in the so-called sharing economy, where technology connects providers with excess capacity and consumers who want on-demand services.”
