Produsage

In the 70’s Alvin Toffler flagged the notion of the ‘prosumer’. Informed consumers who challenged producers to allow greater customisability in the development of goods, and shifting the focus from mass production to more flexible, individualised products. In my personal life I have engaged in this type of behaviour, recently collaborating with the Carvin Guitar Company to customise a guitar wholly of my own design and allowing for an end product that is completely to my specifications.  Huge corporations like Nike now offer entirely customisable shoes and goods, which allow total individualism.

As evidenced above, Tofflers concept of ‘prosumers’ is still well and truly in existence, however it has evolved further with technology. Modern online networks utilising web 2.0 tools have paved the way for produsage, that is, an open environment where users can collaborate and drive the production of information. The ideas and values of produsage have infiltrated many areas of today’s society completely changing the landscape of information production. Users now contribute in creating information in environments such as online gaming (Second Life, The Sims) and citizen journalism (product rating on Amazon and review sites such as Product Review). Probably the most commonly known example of produsage in today’s society is in the area of knowledge management with web sites like Wikipedia allowing users to contribute and edit information to a massive online encyclopedia.

Bruns (2007) outlines four key components of produsage:

1. A wide community of contributors in the generation of content.

1. Fluid transition of users from leader, participant and user of content.

1. Content is constantly evolving and in a sense remains unfinished and under development.

1. Produsage allows for engagement based on merit more than ownership, to enable constant content development.

As such produsage is driven by a culture of users contributing in a shared, communal environment, which is largely void of hierarchal structure and leadership. This concept has great merit as it allows for a more complete product that can continually evolve allowing for constant development of goods and information. However it also presents ethical dangers in that the seemingly non-existent governance structure of information creation can result in easy contamination, inaccuracies and in some cases issues with copyright.

From a wholly personal perspective, I enjoy engaging in produsage. Wikipedia is an often visited website in my browsing history, allowing me to intuitively and efficiently research topics of interest, and in some cases contribute to subjects of my own expertise. Produsage also plays an integral role in the generation of my personal creative endeavours. As a musician and songwriter, the ability to post song ideas on sites like Sound Cloud to receive feedback and to collaborate with other musicians in developing musical ideas has enriched my life. It is through the collaborative process of produsage that my most simple musical ideas can blossom into fully fledged pieces of art.

REFERENCES

Bruns, A 2007. ‘Produsage: towards a broader framework for user-led content creation', Creativity and Cognition: Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCHI conference on Creativity & Cognition <http://ezproxy.lib.swin.edu.au/login?url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1254960.1254975>, viewed 31 January 2013.

Bruns, A 2007. Produsage.org: From production to produsage: research into user-led content creation, <http://produsage.org/>, viewed 31 January 2013.

Snurblog 2005. Some exploratory notes on produsers and produsage,  <http://snurb.info/index.php?q=node/329>, viewed 31 January 2013.