Adrian Chan continues the reflection on P2P and how it relates to the abundance/scarcity distinction, in the context of Rene Girard’s theories on mimetic desire, which in summary says that we want the things that other humans want, making abundance/scarcity into subjective, rather than objective, qualities.
Here’s just an excerpt, I recommend reading the whole entry at the original blog.
Monday morning conceptual intersections…. Reading a P2P foundation blog on mimetic desire, I began thinking about scarcity. In Rene Girard’s view of society, a fundamental rivalry simmers quietly beneath the social order (taboos, rituals, institutions designed to prevent an eruption of violence). According to Girard, our needs are not met simply by directly satisfying the object of our desire. Our desire is mapped to the desires of others: it’s mimetic. As a result, satisfaction is a scarcity, and scarcity is not a material, but a psychological fact. If I want X because my friend wants X, only one of us can have X. In the traditional utilitarian view of the world, X is scarce. In Girard’s view, it’s not that X is scarce, but that desire doubles up. It’s that we all want what others want that makes the objects of our desire scarce, and our desires competitive.
Kim Becher, on Rene’s mimetic desire: “According to Girard, desire is generally ruled by a triangular mechanism, i.e. it�s not directly linked to an object, but mediated by another subject. That is why desires have a tendency to be insatiable, as they are not satisfied by simply obtaining a desired object.”
I then ran into an email recap of Chris Anderson’s talk at the Long Now foundation (see below) sent out by Steward Brand. And something hit me. The economic logic of digital media, of consumables in the digital and networked age is not scarcity (nor supply and demand). In fact, if anything defines the paradigm shift at work, it’s proliferation, not scarcity.
What drives the power law is mimetic desire. What creates value in the long tail is abundance. The two are part of the same curve, but whereas the peak of the power law might be an expression of a sudden upswing in word of mouth marketing, there is value in the long tail because the network, communication tools, and digital consumables all converge to lower the barrier to consumption. Distribution has become so inexpensive in the download age that we can all have those songs, movies, and software applications we’ve always wanted. Regardless of whether we want them because somebody else wanted them, or because Netflix told us that somebody else rented them, or because we have our own individual tastes and passions, too.
And something else hit me, too. In an age of abundance, proliferation, and downloading, what’s scarce are connections, relations, and relationships.”Â