A New Way of Being in the Digital World

While anyone who has suffered through a high school literature class is familiar with the question “To be or not to be,” the question “to have or to be” is probably less well known.

The idea that possession (having) and action (being) may be at odds with each other was of significant interest to the 20th century philosopher Erich Fromm. In his book entitled “The Art of Being” he wrote that, “The full humanization of [people] requires the breakthrough from the possession-centered to the activity-centered orientation, from selfishness and egotism to solidarity and altruism.”

When he wrote this in the mid ‘70s the world was a very different place than it is today. There were no computers, internet, cell phones, IoT devices, or smart anything. It was an offline world based on a dream of wealth and prosperity. But it was built on an illusion. In the offline world, wealth and prosperity are scarce, and tend to become concentrated in the hands of a few people rather than being shared.

But, in a strange way, there may be an upside to this. According to Fromm, possessions and the desire to ‘have’ things is as much a burden as it is a reward. This may seem a bit counterintuitive, but a small thought experiment can show its truth. Imagine you just bought a new car. You likely feel quite excited to use it, but you are also worried it’s going to get scratched, damaged, stolen, etc. If you go to find parking, do you take the first spot, or drive around in circles until you find the one space not near anyone else? Do you give all your friends the keys, or do you tell everyone that only you can drive it? If you spill coffee do you simply say, ‘oh well,’ or do you start shouting a whole string of obscenities?

The joy from the new car comes from what you can do with it, it’s being. The anxiety comes from treating it as valuable in itself, as a possession. In the offline world, the fact that things work this way makes a measure of sense, even if it is unfortunate. If you think about it, much of our language is based around possession — “Do you have time?”, “What degree do you have?”, “How many friends do you have?”, “Do you have a job?” When the online world was being built, it was structured around these same ideas.

The thing is that the online world doesn’t have the same limitations or structure as the offline world. So, it’s time for us to stop thinking about it in the same way, and to start imagining a new paradigm that places being over having, experience over possession, and cooperation over competition. This may sound like an idealistic dream, but the truth is recent advances in online technology make this very much a reality.

In an online world, scarcity in the offline sense just doesn’t exist. Whereas in the offline world you could argue that there is a limited quantity of commodities that need to be shared among an ever growing population, in the online world, the only real limits are time and effort. Participation only requires a device, a power source, and an internet connection. While these things are not available to everyone yet, increasingly they are. And, even if all 7 billion people in the world were online, time and effort don’t decrease, but in fact only increase.

When there is a perception of scarcity, people view life as a zero sum game — either you win or I do, and if I have to choose between them, it will usually be me. However, when you remove this from the equation, as is the case with the online world, the entire model can shift. Rather than competing against each other, we can succeed by working together. Businesses and users don’t have to be at odds with each other, or have a relationship built on treating one side like bits and bytes revenue.

With the right tools in place, we can completely shift the paradigm and begin building a digital world that is based on shared actions and experiences rather than possessions. In truth, it’s the world most digital natives already inhabit (or at least want to), but for the first time, we have the tools to make it a reality. And that’s exactly what we at Kin have set out to do, change the digital world to a place where transparency, cooperation, experience, and engagement are at the center of our digital lives.