Читать книгу Global Experience Industries - Jens Christensen - Страница 10

On the demand-side, consumers are not only becoming more demanding and resourceful. The rapidly changing nature of modern societies has also changed the lives and mentalities of present day people.⁴ By way of globalization as well as the increasing focus on knowledge and the revolutionizing breakthrough of new technologies, the individual human being has become the central actor of modern societies. Companies and markets depend on the competences and choices of the working force and consumers on the one hand, whilst on the other hand, people have become individualized in their approach to work and everyday life. By individualization is not simply meant the spread of a free-market individual, although this may be considered one part of the changes taking place. The dynamics of modern societies has created a new and active individual personality. Human beings are valued on the basis of their individual competences and they value themselves on their own capabilities and act accordingly.

During the past few decades, this individualization process has taken hold of people in developed countries. Traditional social structures and links, such as classes and families, have been replaced or reduced in importance by individually created families and groups of friends and professional networks on the one hand and, on the other, a new set of institutionalized structures in business and state that has taken over many outsourced functions of family life. What is left is a resourceful, demanding, and individually acting human being seeking to fulfill himself in a world of many opportunities that are structured by the framework and dynamics of global and technologically based business. The identity of a contemporary individual is not a given thing. It is a matter of selection and creation, and therefore, it is a life-project of each person. Making use of the many opportunities and products of the experience industries is an important part of the self-driven culture of modern human beings. That makes experience industries expand.