The Dissolution of Ownership

I've recently been scouring the Internet looking for cheap ways to get my digital content fix. A number of my friends use Netflix, but have warned me that the selection of content on offer over here in the UK is dire. I've heard this can be rectified by pulling some secret agent shit on your IP settings to make the service think you're accessing it from the US, but I expect the company will plug that leak sooner rather than later.

I also looked into Lovefilm's similarly priced streaming service, which has a better film selection but lacks many of the US-heavy hitters such as Dexter or Breaking Bad. I checked out the other subscription options and to my surprise, for £11.22 a month I can enjoy both the streaming of content through Internet connected devices and unlimited physical game/movie/boxset rentals (albeit with the caveat that I only have two titles out at a time, although there's no time limit on each item). The deal is made sweeter still by the fact that many of the glaring omissions from the streaming service are available for rental as physical items. This appeals to me now more than ever, as most games don't hold my attention longer than a couple of weeks nowadays anyway. I have to admit that I have been slowly, insidiously won over to the 22nd Century digital way of thinking; a mindset where you only have the legal right to consume what's in front of you if you've got an intangible license linked to one of your legion of user accounts for various different services to prove it.

The next logical steps are cloud computing (where nothing is stored locally, and everything is streamed through the Internet), and then computing that is completely streamed (nothing is even computed locally, and you're  essentially seeing a high quality, interactive screenshot of something happening on a far distant super computer). Call me childish, but I think having instant gratification on tap sounds pretty rad, even if almost completely abandoning the idea of physical ownership sounds pretty scary right now.