week 6: The digital economy

Write a critical analysis of the video ‘Introducing Airbnb.org’ on YouTube. What story does the video tell about the digital economy, and how does it tell that story? How does the Airbnb story draw on the ‘California ideology’, as described by Barbrook and Cameron?

Companies like Airbnb exemplify how the digital economy is reshaping our daily lives, transforming industries, and redefining traditional concepts of community, restaurants, and work. Airbnb’s mission is to connect people through technology, allowing individuals to rent a home or book accommodation around the world with just a few clicks of a mouse. Yet, behind Airbnb’s story is the ideal of the digital economy and the ‘California Ideology’:

The digital Economy

The short film “About Airbnb.org” tells the story of a host who decides to share his home with strangers after Hurricane Sandy. To help those who had lost their homes, she asked Airbnb to list her place for free. As a company, Airbnb leverages a variety of technological means to support this desire, ultimately providing emergency housing to many people around the world during hurricanes and other crises. This phenomenon not only embodies the core belief of the digital economy that the problems of the future can be solved through networking and collaboration, but also demonstrates Airbnb’s business model in the digital world: it does not rely on centralized control, but is more open, Encourage collaboration and embrace the potential of the sharing economy. As Tapscott and Williams (2008, p.143) argue, “In the digital economy, the answer is customer value, not control”. In this digitally fertile environment, “owning access, people, products, or even intellectual property is no longer the key to success, but openness is” (Jarvis 2009, p. 4, cited in Freedman, 2016, p. 74). This is one of the core features of the digital economy, a model in which “digital participants” jointly promote economic development through openness and collaboration.

Through its vast network of nodes, the Internet “connects people to information, action, and each other” (Jarvis 2009, p. 28, cited in Freedman, 2016）, thereby promoting broader connections and interactions. The core concept of Airbnb is the embodiment of this “sharing culture”. It uses the decentralized Internet structure to encourage users to share homes and achieve collective benefits. This sharing model, as described by Leadbeater (2009, p. 7, in Freedman, 2016 p. 74), is a new situation of “We-Think” spawned by the network’s “sharing, decentralization, and democratic culture”. This form of collaboration leverages the power of technology to bring together the ideas and creativity of millions of ordinary people, promoting a “niche economy” built by large-scale collaborators. In the video, although Ms. Shell originally proposed the idea of ​​sharing a house, Airbnb turned this idea into practical actions through its professional technical team, achieving both commercial benefits and public welfare value. At the same time, Ms. Shell also became a “prosumer” through this mass participation model.

California Ideology

As Marshall McLuhan points out, California ideology holds that new technologies will empower individuals, thereby reducing the power of big business and government, achieving the ideal of decentralization. This ideology holds that the triumph of high-tech free markets is both natural and inevitable (Barbrook & Cameron, 1995). In the case of Airbnb, most of the company’s labor needs (house sharing, cleaning, etc.) are outsourced to homeowners, but they still rely on key personnel who can develop and create original products (Airbnb websites, etc.). These skilled workers and entrepreneurs constitute the so-called “virtual class.”

In the California ideology, every member of the “virtual class” is promised the opportunity to become a successful high-tech entrepreneur (Barbrook & Cameron, 1995). They believe that the government should relax restrictions on creative entrepreneurs because these entrepreneurs are truly calm and courageous people who can take risks. Many members of the “virtual class” believe that new technologies can somehow automatically solve social, racial, and economic problems without any sacrifice on their part. However, this belief ignores the real issues behind the digital economy: this kind of “information poverty” and “information affluence” is causing racial segregation and exacerbating social divisions. Who exactly benefits from the development of high technology?

Reference:

•  Freedman, D. (2016) Ch. 3: Web 2.0 and the death of the blockbuster economy, in J. Curran, N. Fenton and D. Freedman (eds), Misunderstanding the Internet. London: Routledge.
• Barbrook, R. and Cameron, A. (1995) ‘The Californian ideology’, Mute. https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/californian-ideology
• ‘Introducing Airbnb.org’. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uet-GeWdKK4\