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Will You Own Anything Anymore?

As hyperinflation continues its relentless monthly climb across many parts of the world, one can't help but recall Alex Kurtagić's remarkably prescient novel, Mister, published in 2008. Set in the 2030s and 2040s, the dystopian story depicts a society where price tags are no longer static but update digitally in real time, responding instantly to inflation and market conditions. Fifteen years later, that future no longer feels like science fiction. Electronic shelf labels are already replacing paper price tags in supermarkets. Dynamic pricing algorithms determine what we pay for airline tickets, hotels, ride-sharing services, and increasingly, everyday products. Prices are becoming fluid rather than fixed. But perhaps an even greater transformation is taking place—one that extends far beyond inflation. It is the slow disappearance of ownership itself. For most of human history, wealth was tangible. We owned land, books, records, cash, paintings, cars, furniture, and shelves full of photographs documenting our lives. Ownership had weight. It occupied space. Today, those same possessions are quietly evaporating into code. Your music library became Spotify. Your films became Netflix. Your books became Kindle. Your photo albums became iCloud. Your software became subscriptions. Even your computer is shrinking. CD drives disappeared years ago. USB ports are becoming fewer. Physical hard drives are increasingly optional, replaced by cloud storage that exists somewhere you will never physically see. The objects are disappearing. What remains is access. This subtle shift has profound implications. Increasingly, we don't buy products—we rent experiences. We don't own software; we subscribe to it. We don't own our media collections; we lease access until the platform changes its terms, loses a licensing agreement, or simply disappears. Ownership is becoming a service. Artificial intelligence is accelerating this transition. The AI economy places less value on possessing things and more value on accessing intelligence on demand. Instead of purchasing software once, we subscribe to AI assistants. Instead of buying creative tools, we rent computing power. Even knowledge itself is becoming something we query rather than accumulate. In many ways, AI is transforming intelligence into a utility, much like electricity. The implications stretch even further. If AI can write, design, compose music, generate videos, and produce software in seconds, what exactly becomes valuable? Is it the output? The prompt? The algorithm? The computing infrastructure? Or simply access to the system? Entire industries built around ownership may find themselves disrupted by a generation that grows up expecting to own almost nothing at all. Even money is evolving. Cash is giving way to digital payments. Central bank digital currencies are being explored around the world. Cryptocurrencies introduced the idea that ownership itself could exist purely as cryptographic proof rather than physical possession. Whether one embraces or rejects these technologies, they all point toward the same destination: value is becoming increasingly intangible. Ironically, the more digital our lives become, the less certain ownership appears. When your photos live in the cloud, do you truly own them? When your AI assistant stores your conversations, who owns your memories? When every creative work can be generated, copied, or remixed by intelligent systems, what does originality even mean? Perhaps the next generation will not measure wealth by what fills their homes, but by what fills their digital identities. Reputation, data, blue checkmarks, online communities, digital assets, and AI-enhanced capabilities may become the new forms of capital. Maybe NFTs arent as dead as we think, just a social experiment that was deployed a bit too early. The physical world may gradually become the interface, while the digital world becomes the substance. Some welcome this transformation. Physical possessions require maintenance, storage, insurance, and eventually replacement. Digital assets offer convenience, mobility, and instant accessibility from anywhere in the world. But who controls your access to it? Remember how in the movie Demolition Man (1996) how your card can get automatically debited for saying a bad word? But I digress. As ownership migrates into platforms, clouds, and subscriptions, control migrates with it. If access depends on accounts, licenses, or monthly payments, are we still owners—or merely long-term users? This isn't simply an economic transition. It’s a philosophical one. For thousands of years, civilization has been built around acquiring, protecting, and passing down possessions. Now imagine a future where you inherit passwords instead of property, subscriptions instead of collections, and digital identities instead of physical legacies, are we witnessing the end of ownership as we have understood it? Now if AI eventually manages our finances, creates our art, curates our memories, and negotiates on our behalf, will ownership itself become an outdated concept? More importantly... In a world where almost everything is accessed rather than possessed, what will we truly be able to call our own?