Remember that episode of Growing Pains when little Ben decides he should carry all his possessions around with him so that burglars won’t get them? (If not, watch it here). Well, more than twenty years later, Ben is probably carrying a lot of his possessions around with him, at least his music and some of his movies, via his iPod. But if you know anyone who has been mugged in New York City, you know that it’s now easier to be robbed of all your possessions. Unless you’re still holding on to your CDs or have your iTunes purchases backed up on your hard drive, once you lose that iPod you’ve lost everything.

But now, following yesterday’s announcement that iTunes is renting movies, there’s nothing to worry about. We can do away with possessions altogether (as Carol suggests — hair dryer excluded, of course). And we can begin by throwing out all our DVDs and VHS tapes (you still have VHS tapes?). Who needs to own when you can rent whatever movie you’re interested in watching whenever you want to watch it? And you don’t even have to travel around looking for a local video store (if you even still have a local video store). Some people may have even already given up on possessing movies when Netflix came out. I, for one, stopped buying movies when I first subscribed, though I still haven’t thrown out the few DVDs I already own. Within the year, I may very well clear off those movie shelves and replace the DVDs with books.

But wait, do I even need to hold onto my books? I can download books from the web, too. There go a bunch more possessions! Soon I will have empty shelves, but then I’ll get rid of my shelves. And while iTunes may not rent music (yet), there are other places that do — sort of — and so I can get rid of all my CDs and all my owned music files. Then I’ll only own clothes, but of course I can probably get rid of those possessions too, since I no longer have to go outside to rent movies or buy books or make purchases in physical stores. Next: our bodies. Yes, once again I’m talking about us all just living The Matrix. Obviously Steve Jobs is working for the sentient machines. Is it any coincidence that The Matrix is one of the first catalog movies available to rent?

Once again, we need to listen to the wise words of Papa Seaver and keep living as we always have. We need to keep displaying our movies and books on our shelves and keep interacting with people, who will come over to our houses and judge us by the movies and books on our shelves. Sure, go ahead and rent some movies on iTunes once in awhile, but don’t make a habit out of it. Because if you do, there’s nothing to stop Steve Jobs and his evil robot overlords at Apple from developing other ways to make us completely plugged in. My prediction for Macworld 2009: iSteak.