Breathe
By Rita Alicia Rodríguez
New forms of social interaction are redefining the way people perceive value, innovation, self-awareness, sense of belonging and emotional attachment to experiences. _____________________________________________________
Every December we take stock of the plans we were able to achieve and those that will be added to the new list for the following year. In this uncomfortable exercise of honesty, we are also ready to think about whether we have everything we think we need.
If by this time you have already gone through the "secret friend" dynamic in the office, you will have supported yourself a little in the process and will complement it with family parties and meetings with friends, if they were kind enough to clarify what they expected to receive. And it is also during these dates when we realize how different we are and how much we have changed to decide what we like, what amazes us, what satisfies us and, as the centennials used to say , "what represents us".
Speaking of generations and changes, how many of us remember those friends or acquaintances who had their digital pet called Tamagotchi. Also those who became skilled farmers expanding their virtual lands and who showed great concern and dependence on the "care" of their digital farms.
These memories made me noise because a few days ago I received a viral exercise of Artificial Intelligence where the purpose was to represent the main positions of a company with animals and what a surprise! The AI algorithm is a bit lost in agenda items and it is still not enough to contemplate women in management positions.
In these examples so distant in time I found common places where we all continue to transit: emotional bonding, group belonging and possession, identity and self-expression. Digitalization and emerging technologies (such as AI, virtual or augmented reality) allow us to create at least an alternate reality of our passage on this plane. However, it seems that the belief systems that have limited us with their implicit shortcomings, we are bringing them into the virtual environment where the intangible merges between what we have and what we desire.
The intangible market has a significant value in the economic and cultural context we are living in; it is impacting the way we consume, make purchasing decisions and where experiences are conceived as a valuable end product. It is an offer of goods and services that connect with personal aspirations derived from the collective context, providing a form of validation or representation of what we demand of ourselves and "need to achieve". Under this transaction scheme, what we possess of the intangible is the sum of assets that represent us in our symbolic social or professional capital.
Intangible market businesses such as video games, in the entertainment industry, will generate a global sector value of 400 billion dollars by 2023, according to Statista. Meanwhile, the metaverse is a virtual world where you can buy mainly land, clothing and accessories and is made up of more than 900 million users. As for invisible art or digital artworks (not physically visible), the case of the Italian Salvatore Garau stands out as the artist who sells invisible sculptures reaching a record of 27 thousand euros, specifying that "not everything that exists should occupy a space".
As for spiritual experiences such as past or future life regressions, they are intangible services oriented to the search for emotional or spiritual well-being. It is a business that has found its niche in healing and liberation by alternating the experience, the elevation of the senses and the physical environment. Unfortunately, we have witnessed how this offer has presented some cases of lack of security in the protocols.
In all this, what can we expect from the intangible market?
To begin with, it would be ideal to build towards congruence. If desire represents the belief that we need something, then it would be interesting to rethink what we give importance to. In the tangible world, we have a long list of pending issues and commitments to the planet and humanity. We have areas of opportunity in our daily interaction, but we are looking for virtual realities that do little to transform the way we relate to each other, and even less in terms of equity and inclusion.
The paradigm of the markets of the future will be the ethics and balance between the intangible and digital fusion. The advancement of the revolutionary technologies that will accompany it is creating dynamic challenges and opportunities where we cannot leave all the responsibility to the advancement of the digital economy.
This year during the 12 chimes and when you eat the plate of "lentils of abundance", reflect on whether you really need what you want.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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