It’s an exciting time to live in Bay Area. The newest tech bubble has created a brand new kind of lifestyle. One where the extravagances of the mega-rich are well within reach. Need a driver? Lyft and Uber have you covered. Rather have someone go to the grocery store? Instacart will do it. Want someone to wait out all night for that new iPhone? TaskRabbit can help. In fact all the daily nuisances, all the chores and errands that take up copious amounts of free time can now all be outsourced to someone else. This has created a new kind of economy, one that thrives on smartphones and LTE.
These come as you are, stay as long as you like, work when you want to job nouveaus are the future of work.
This new techno-savvy economy has more than just a few beneficiaries. Sure the end users gain access to a lifestyle that is usually reserved for those with endless means. It’s not cheap, but it has made services like personal shoppers far more affordable and accessible to everyday people. The bigger winners here are not really those that can afford to splurge on a gopher every once and a while, it’s the gophers themselves. Any person with a car and some spare time can drive for Uber and Lyft. More than my fair share of drivers in the city were using the service to not just support themselves but support their dreams. Students putting themselves through college, aspiring DJs out to promote their new gig, and writers just looking to support their work. These come as you are, stay as long as you like, work when you want to job nouveaus are the future of work.
For those that can afford it, buying a smartphone doesn’t just mean getting the ability to check facebook on the go. It’s the venture capitalist that can fund your dreams and highest aspirations. The ones who would rather write a novel then spend their day behind a desk now have the ability to do just that. They can easily make their love their primary job, and support that through a more normal route. In essence the advent of the smartphone is the realization of a long promised dream. That one day technology would one day give us the ability to remove ourselves from the office and change the way we all work.
Is it exclusive? Not really, any Android or iPhone buys you entry. Is it exclusionary? Yes.
Unfortunately, this is not an open world. Not everyone has access to it yet. Is it exclusive? Not really, any Android or iPhone buys you entry. Is it exclusionary? Yes. Most smartphones can access this wealth of apps and services, but most of those phones come with high data costs and can usually track upwards of $100+ a month. Even when the phone is free to start, there are still many in the world who can scarcely afford that. However, its rapidly changing. In fact due to the nature of these services it’s not hard for someone to pick up extra hours of work on any day, at any time. If you ever need a couple of extra bucks there is always more hours on the time sheet. The day when you can only work so many hours are over, now you can work around the clock if you so choose.
While it might seem like a bad thing, as we Americans already overwork ourselves, it’s actually a major step in the right direction. Imagine a world where you never have to choose between your dreams and practicality. A world where you never have to actually give up on your dreams, one where you can pursue them with tenacity and desire without dedicating yourself wholly to another cause on top of that. The day where you have to choose between a career in acting and being an accountant is quickly coming to an end.
When bad app ideas are garnering millions in seed money it’s not long before the bottom falls out.
This time, however, may soon be over as quickly as it began. It’s no secret that San Francisco and by proxy the rest of the world, resides on top of a huge tech bubble. The amount of money flowing to and from business to business is not sustainable. When bad app ideas are garnering millions in seed money it’s not long before the bottom falls out. We’ve already seen that turnover rate between success and failure is shockingly fast. Look no further then Zynga, the creator of Farmville. A few years ago the company was the talk of the tech-world. Low overhead and soaring profits gained it a billion dollar evaluation, now the company can barely stay afloat.
At what point do we see TaskRabbit or Instacart or any other fly-by-night service start to close up shop? And if these kinds of services go, so does the freedom they provide their “employees”. Or is the model here to stay? Even if these services close their doors, others will undoubtedly take their place. It’s hard to imagine a world where a service like Uber or Lyft doesn’t exist even if those companies do fail. And surely smartphones are here to stay, and while apps will come and go there will always be more to fill in the gaps when another fails. Zynga was replaced by Rovio, King, and a whole mess of others. While even those replacements are starting to see thinning profit margins, even more are coming in behind them.
We now have access to everything we want at the swipe of a finger.
Is the unsustainable, actually sustainable? It’s hard to know, as much as industry experts can point to the past and say unequivocally “No”, we haven’t really been here before. The closest we had was in the mid-90s with the Internet boom. While the crash did come, much of the winners still remain. The internet still exists, shopping websites are just as strong as ever, and internet connected devices are everywhere. The ideas of that boom didn’t die, they just became more sustainable. The fast spending died off as the get rich quick set moved on and things normalized. Will it happen again? Probably every gold rush has its eventual end, but this isn’t just a cash grab. This is a seismic shift in how we live. We now have access to everything we want at the swipe of a finger. More so than just the ability to shop or catch a ride, we now can dictate when and how we work. Not just for the societal elite, but everyone.
