The stupendous success of such “sharing economy” disruptor blockbusters as Uber and Airbnb has, predictably, inspired a wave of similar networked-based service provider service network provider networks. They’re proliferating all over Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley, as every Silicon Al and Silicon Sal seeks to make the next jillion.
Traditionally, the American Dream has implied ownership — of a home, a piece of land, a private life. Now comes its timely update. Call it The Rentership Society, where everything has a price, everyone is an entrepreneur, and everything — starting with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ‑is up for grabs.
Below, just a few of the new services under development.
Raymnt – Every day, you put on clothes. And every day, the rest of your clothes sit in drawers and hang in closets, unused. But what if I wore your clothes and you wore mine? And while I was wearing yours, ALL of mine were available for you or others to wear, because I wasn’t wearing them? Which meant that all your clothes were available, not only to me, but to others who, in the act of wearing your clothes, made all their clothes available to still others?
That’s the idea behind this exciting app. Members sign up to go to each other’s homes and try on and wear each other’s clothes—during which, a funny thing happens. Relationships are struck up. Acquaintances are made. Clothes are tried on. Other clothes are not worn, and the clothes not worn by the people not wearing them are worn by other people wearing clothes.
And friendships that last a lifetime are forged.
If it’s true that you don’t know a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes, how much better do you know him after you’ve spent a day in his pants? And at the end of that day, somehow, in some way, money is made, by someone.
APPT-App – You have a doctor’s appointment. At the last minute, you realize you can’t make it. Until now, you’d have to cancel and, in most instances, pay a missed-appointment fee. Not with APPT-App. Now, as soon as you realize you can’t make the appointment, you log on to your network of APPT-App “counter-patients” ready and willing to take your appointment. You select one whose profile and medical history you find congenial. They go to your doctor. Your doctor examines, not you, but them. They pay the fee for the appointment. You re-schedule your missed appointment, and pay APPT-App, and your counter-patient, a nominal sum.
Then, a day or a week or a month later, you become someone else’s counter-patient. You go to their doctor, undergo the examination, and pay for it through your normal insurance—a cost mitigated by the fee your counter-patient pays you.
It sounds like a system in which you’re exposed to the diagnoses and treatments of a random group of doctors you’ve never heard of and who have never heard of you—and that’s exactly what it is. The randomness of the APPT-App experience assures that everyone—doctors, staff, and patients—is on maximum alert. No one is complacent, because no one is comfortable. Men see gynecologists. Women see urologists. An allergist looks—for perhaps the first time since medical school—at a sprained ankle. Cardiologists are forced to have opinions about tinnitus. The entire medical profession is disrupted, as both sides of the doctor-patient relationship pursue healthcare in an unprecedented state of paranoia and uncertainty. The result? More wellness. Fewer illness. Better good outcomes. More intended consequences. Healthier, more caring healthcare.
We’ve Dreamers – When the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. orated, for the ages, “I have a dream,” twenty thousand people listening to him thought, “Uh-oh…” Because, while our dreams, to us, are compelling, enigmatic, significant, hilarious, and meaningful, to most other people (particularly our friends and relatives and spouses) our dreams are boring, arbitrary, and without interest—as are their dreams to us. Because of modern society and everything, we are stuck: we want to share this most intimate and emotional of experiences. And yet we cannot.
What to do?
Enter We’ve Dreamers, a company that connects people who volunteer (for a price!) to listen to other people talk about their dreams in exchange for a reciprocal service. Without feigned interest or frankly-expressed boredom. Without polite, half-hearted, unconvincing, “Awesome”’s or hurtful, “Is there much more? Because I have to be somewhere.”
With a stroke, this Skype/Face Time-based app has disrupted our entire dream-sharing culture, including psychotherapy, Freudian and Jungian psychiatry, and the diary industry. And sure, the extra income for the listeners is nice. But there may be a larger societal benefit to be realized as well. Is it too much to hope that, as more and more We’ve Dreamers users connect and share their most private subconscious fears and desires, we as a nation will become more emotionally balanced, more self-understanding, more sane?
One can dream.
Kidswap – Every parent knows the feeling: sometimes you just reach the limit of your patience. “If only I didn’t have children!” you silently, secretly think. “Or if only I had someone else’s kids!”
Now you can. With Kidswap, a LAN (Local Area Network)-based sharing app, parents in a given geographical radius can trade children for specified lengths of time, from an hour to a week or more. Or, one family can offer to “take in” another’s brood, for a mutually-agreed-upon price.
Choosing from a number of specific profile criteria (location, religion, pets, diet, bedroom and playroom facilities, belief in corporal punishment, etc.) you browse, select, connect, and make the trade. Call it “the Tinder of Child Exchange,” sort of.
Moreover, savvy moms and dads will learn to network with families their kids might not be so eager to visit—the “mean” ones, the “strict” ones, the “sadistic” ones. Kidswap thus becomes a useful tool of discipline and credible threat. “Clean your room, or you’re going over to the Johnsons!” becomes something that, with luck, need only be said once.
The app has proven immediately popular—so much so that the company has announced a companion app with which parents may connect with childless couples or individuals. If these users have no kids to swap, what’s in it for them? Another income stream, with enticing “surge pricing” for high-traffic times.
Plus, a chance to practice valuable child-rearing techniques without long-term consequences.
http://tinyurl.com/oall5zn
Eli Eminov
