Link stolen directly from MarginalRevolution, but left me speechless (and blog-ful).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7818140.stm
I watched an episode of Pushing Daisies last night that featured a company whose product was "friends for hire", and thought "well isn't that just cute and quirky". Turns out, it's also true! The article is about the many things you can rent hourly in Japan, including pets and fathers. It makes a lot of sense in a very creepy way...it makes me imagine a dystopian future where specialization has gone so far that everyone has a single niche role that they fulfill and nothing else, so that "programmer" and "husband" are incompatible. How does this interact with suffragist movements and the current obsession with user-generated content? Are specialization and universalism (or whatever term you want to use) incompatible? How can the future accommodate both?
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Well, this is just an example of the ever expanding commodification of life. While the concept of commodification was originally applied to products (things), it applies equally well to services and relationships. It is a bit of capitalism run amok! See the book New Forms of Consumption.
ps. sorry for the deletes, I kept getting the link wrong!
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