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In an age that has seen the emergence of the “knockoff economy”—where no copyright protection of certain industries has had no negative impact on innovation and creativity—and the “shared economy”—where the millennia generation prefers access to the ownership of goods and services—it seems that indeed we have entered a new economic phase or paradigm. Some have understood this in terms of a “hybrid” or “postcapitalist” economy, where strands of capitalist and socialist theories coexist without rancor or where the best of both come to fruition.Jeremy Rifkin is not a newcomer to this conversation, having written Biosphere Politics in 1991 and The Age of Access in 2000. After a quarter of a century his voice should be heard, regardless of any disagreement about the details of his analysis. For him, the Third Industrial Revolution in the twenty-first century is characterized in these terms: “The Internet is becoming the communication medium for managing distributed renewable energies and automated logistics and transport in an increasingly interconnected global Commons” (22). Coming on the heels of the Free Software movement (1980s), “whose aim was to create a global Collaborative Commons” (100), Rifkin moves to the more contemporary Free Culture movement and the environmental movement. Along the way he introduces us to the more recent Makers movement: “the open-source sharing of new inventions, the promotion of a collaborative learning culture, a belief in community self-sufficiency, and a commitment to sustainable production practices” (99).The Third Industrial Revolution depends to a large extent on an appreciation of the Internet of Things, which Rifkin defines in terms of the connectivity of people and things via sensors that are processed automatically, feeding Big Data (11); this is a “disruptive technology” (in Schumpeter's terms) that will lead us to a “new era” in which “we each become a node in the nervous system of the biosphere” (14). Given that Rifkin's notion of the “infrastructure” requires three elements—“a communication medium, a power source, and a logistic mechanism” (14)—it makes sense to suggest the demise of capitalist production as we have known it in the past two centuries (for him, the First and Second Industrial Revolutions). His overall vision is based on the fact that “as more and more of the goods and services that make up the economic life of society edge toward near zero marginal cost and become almost free, the capitalist market will continue to shrink into more narrow niches where profit-making enterprises survive only at the edges of the economy, relying on a diminishing consumer base for very specialized products and services” (5).Just like David Harvey (2014), Rifkin contends that “capitalism's operating logic is designed to fail by succeeding” (2) because increased productivity leads to “the zero marginal cost revolution” (4), admittedly one that sets aside (or ignores) initial or fixed costs (6–7). But while Harvey focuses on numerous internal inconsistencies or contradictions of market capitalism (already outlined by Marx), Rifkin is exclusively preoccupied with the reduction of marginal costs as productivity increases. If the marginal cost of X comes close to zero, he suggests, X is actually “free.” And free goods and services bring about “a new economic paradigm—the Collaborative Commons” (1). Using Thomas Kuhn's famous (and for his critics infamous) notion of “paradigm” and its revolutionary shifts, Rifkin insists on seeing the Internet of Things as part of the Third Industrial Revolution, which ushers the Collaborative Commons. Is this a futuristic dream? Is it a utopian ideal, the realization of which we can only imagine? Not at all, as far as Rifkin is concerned.To begin with, “the young collaboratists,” as he calls them, “are borrowing the principle virtues of both the capitalists and socialists, while eliminating the centralizing nature of both the free market and the bureaucratic state” (19). As such, their actions speak louder than any ideology or imagined blueprint. Second, given that the commons is one of “the oldest form[s] of institutionalized, self-managed activity in the world” (16), it can hardly be seen as fantastic or unrealizable. Third, given the current impact of the Third Industrial Revolution, there is already an infrastructure in place that accommodates a “Collaborative Commons.” And finally, since an infrastructure already exists and the mind-set of its users is both collaborative and infused with an “empathic consciousness” (298), there is a certain inevitability to its eventual success.Though Rifkin concedes that there is a power struggle among those participating in the Third Industrial Revolution, be they government agencies, corporate interests, or Internet producers and consumers (195), he focuses on the cooperative renaissance (211ff.) that already engulfs more than 20 percent of the global economy. He talks of “benefit corporations,” with new legal status that protects them from the potential greed of their investors; “social entrepreneurialism,” which combines the ideas of for-profit and nonprofit companies (263); and the ongoing shift to the triple bottom line of “people and planet before profit” (264). Along the way, notions of scarcity give way to those of abundance (273), hybrid partnership (297), and overall happiness (276–86). Rifkin reassures his readers that his “hope rests not with technology alone, but with the history of the human narrative” (298), one that sees the shift of consciousness from mythological, theological, ideological, and psychological to an empathic one (298–302).Rifkin is quick to remind us of the Appropriate Technology movement, which includes, for him, the insights of Gandhi, Schumacher, and Ivan Illich (100), all of whom believed in the use of less rather than more technology, in localized “small” steps of economic development rather than revolutionary (paradigm) shifts. Suggesting that his idealized utopian vision bears the likeness of Gandhi's dictum that “the earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need but not every man's greed,” Rifkin pushes for his own (107, 274).Does this not sound utopian through and through? Are we not led down the fanciful path of the demise of capitalism to the promised land of Collaborative Commons? Rifkin answers in the negative: “Often people mistake empathic consciousness with utopianism when in fact, it is the very opposite… . There is no need of empathy in heaven and no place for it in utopia because in these otherworldly realms there is no pain and suffering, no frailties and flaws, but only perfection and immortality” (301). Here at last we have his view of utopia, one that may not resonate with all of us. Utopian thinking is indeed inspirational and at times in “no place.” Yet this does not mean that it necessarily ignores the realities—frailties and flaws—built into our forms of organization and governance.As much as we would like to imagine only the benefits afforded to us through the Internet, initial costs must be borne by some central agency, as Yochai Benkler (2006) readily admits. However such arrangements for governance of these centralized resources are eventually set in place—democratically and dispersed—power relations are bound to dominate the conversation. How will decisions be made? Will the capitalist “invisible hand” still be the standard against which exploitation is measured? Will collaboration necessarily benefit us all or just those among us who are experts? Will income and wealth inequality vanish in the digital age or remain a thorn in our collective side? What about the delicate balance between accessibility and privacy (which Rifkin mentions briefly [75–77])? As empathic as we may all become over time, can we imagine excising jealousy and rivalry if not outright competition among humans? Can sadness and suffering be fully eradicated (without resort to the Prozac of the future)?As market capitalism becomes less dominant, we should all welcome ideas and books by the likes of Rifkin that promote alternative models of organization. But accepting too rosy a picture of these models without proper critical engagement will be at our peril.