The age of experiences : harnessing happiness to build a new economy

In __The Age of Experiences,__ Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt examines how the advance of happiness science is impacting the economy, making possible new experience-products that __really__ make people happy and help forward-looking businesses expand and develop new technologies. In today’s marketplace there is less interest in goods and services and more interest in buying and selling personal improvements and experiences. Hunnicutt traces how this historical shift in consumption to the “softer” technologies of happiness represents not only a change in the modern understanding of progress, but also a practical, economic transformation, profoundly shaping our work and the ordering of our life goals. Based on incisive historical research, Hunnicutt demonstrates that we have begun to turn from material wealth to focus on the enrichment of our personal and social lives. __The Age of Experiences__ shows how industry, technology, and the general public are just beginning to realize the potential of the new economy. Exploring the broader implications of this historical shift, Hunnicutt concludes that the new demand for experiences will result in the reduction of work time, the growth of jobs, and the regeneration of virtue—altogether an increasingly healthy public life. In The Age of Experiences, Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt examines how the advance of happiness science is impacting the economy, making possible new experience-products that really make people happy and help forward-looking businesses expand and develop new technologies. In today's marketplace there is less interest in goods and services and more interest in buying and selling personal improvements and experiences. Hunnicutt traces how this historical shift in consumption to the "softer" technologies of happiness represents not only a change in the modern understanding of progress, but also a practical, economic transformation, profoundly shaping our work and the ordering of our life goals. Based on incisive historical research, Hunnicutt demonstrates that we have begun to turn from material wealth to focus on the enrichment of our personal and social lives. The Age of Experiences shows how industry, technology, and the general public are just beginning to realize the potential of the new economy. Exploring the broader implications of this historical shift, Hunnicutt concludes that the new demand for experiences will result in the reduction of work time, the growth of jobs, and the regeneration of virtue - altogether an increasingly healthy public life. -- Provided by publisher "In The Age of Experiences, Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt examines how the advance of happiness science is impacting the economy, making possible new experience-products that really make people happy and help forward-looking businesses expand and develop new technologies. In today's marketplace there is less interest in goods and services and more interest in buying and selling personal improvements and experiences. Hunnicutt traces how this historical shift in consumption to the "softer" technologies of happiness represents not only a change in the modern understanding of progress, but also a practical, economic transformation, profoundly shaping our work and the ordering of our life goals. Based on incisive historical research, Hunnicutt demonstrates that we have begun to turn from material wealth to focus on the enrichment of our personal and social lives. The Age of Experiences shows how industry, technology, and the general public are just beginning to realize the potential of the new economy. Exploring the broader implications of this historical shift, Hunnicutt concludes that the new demand for experiences will result in the reduction of work time, the growth of jobs, and the regeneration of virtue - altogether an increasingly healthy public life." -- Résumé de l'éditeur Contents Foreword by B. Joseph Pine II Preface Introduction 1. Historical Context: Technology, Unemployment, and Progress 2. The Experience Economy: Customer-Added Value 3. The Transformation Economy: The Customer Is the Product 4. Consumerism and Its Critics: Warnings and a Novel Dialectic 5. The New Sciences of Happiness: A Catalog of Positive Psychology's Elements of Well-Being 6. The New Sciences of Happiness: Positive Neuroscience-More Catalogs and Models 7. Experience Design: Applying the Catalogs and Models 8. The Economics of Experiences: The Liberating Potential of the New Economies and Technology 9. Historical Guides to Experience Design and the Age of Experiences Afterword Notes Index