Produsage

This is coming rather late and under the influence of my cold. I hope it's reasonably linear. Already skipped one blog - didn't want to miss another! Credit's not the point at the moment, so much as making sure I'm on the same page as everyone else.

I'll be honest, I'm re-reading/more thoroughly reading Produsage and it's a bit of a hard go - I'm finding it rather heady, and I like getting into theory.

I. How Produsage connects to the features of the internet itself

Open-Source: you simply couldn't have these produser, prosumer, etc concepts without a good deal of adherence to open-source production. Everybody in, everybody working on it, everybody contributing what they're good at instead of what they're told (in theory at least) for the betterment of the whole idea. The 'net really started as an experiment, and was originally fleshed out by people jsut mucking around (once we got past the government payroll thing!).

The Collective: priveliging the group over the individual goes against the recently accepted ideal of the creator valiantly striving to keep all hands off his or her creation, and keeping its developments under wraps, as Bruns points out. I don't think the internet as we know it today would've come into being if it had been developed with that ethic instead of the one it had. Eg, what would it have been like if the thing was developed according to, say, a Ford-assembly line principle? The idea of a group getting together to create/refine of their own will is the backbone of Produsage.

Pro-Amateur: Or, as I like to think of it, the Tinkerer's Principle. Letting ideas or manifestations arise from the virtual kitchen sinks of a number of people rather than waiting for drafts to come off a boardroom with the CEO's imprimatur will get many more things done. Pro-am's as Bruns calls them have more know-how than the traditional concept of consumer, and as such may wield more power. For instance, if I loose my patience with myspace (matter of time, people) but I still want a social network to play on, I have the option of not just signing up with a competitor, but making my own, theoretically becoming a "threat" to the "established" networking sites. All I have to do is learn the necessary tech and get enough followers, but it's a real option which lets me say "I've had it with you, I really am going to do it my way" despite the fact that I'm a "nobody".

"Iterative": One of the wonderful things about produsage in a virtual setting is that you can always hit refresh. Wikipedia is a lovely example of this - it's continuously edited, discussed, and worked on in various ways, so if you bear the evolving nature of the site in mind, you can find some great info or at least jumping off points for your own research. Contrast this to a closed, or printed publication which was made to suit a committee smaller than wiki's, whose whims could very well have colored its content...can't put a [citation needed] on that, now can you?

II. Internet Mindsets as seen in Lankshear and Knobel (it gets briefer at this point, I promise!)

A produser, especially one transitioning from the industrial or "educated consumer" mindset into a 'net one will pretty much have to relearn what they think about ideas, manifesting/producing them, and of course how to properly disseminate them into the world. Prioroties would have to be shifted from prizing discrete units to successive "drafts" which may or may not have any tangible presence at all. Ownership will be less important than the quality of contribution, and distrobution will rely on more social communication (have you heard about this site? try this online shop!) rather than buying what you need or want from a place because you have to (eg I can rent all the obscure movies I want from netflix, rather then schlepping to blockbuster and getting whatever they have on the shelf)

III. Re-mediation

Hayles mentions that the 2 big points of remediation are immediacy and hypermediacy. Immediacy involves making the content so compelling that we ignore the medium, and hypermediacy (in an amusing countermove) refers to the proliferation of media, ensuring that we'll have more trouble ignoring them.

We can relate immediacy to produsage when contemplating "virtual goods" or services - by which I mean exchanges that have analogies in the physical world, but can be done just as well online, with a minimum of physical markers. For instance, I can call up my netflix list right now and watch a movie *just* like I would by going to a video store and renting it. I get the same pleasure for less cost and resource use. The medium doens't matter as much as the movie. And I'm goign against the traditional grain of hollywood makes/shows/releases ----> i buy ----> i watch. I get to have more of a voice and sense of adventure in what I see (yay! bring on the Almodovar!)

Hypermediacy related to produsage just as easily, because more consumers morphing into producers means *more* media outlets as people can now (in theory) make whatever outlet they want. Or they can opt in to a company/corporate hosted outlet as they see fit, thanks to the larger entities anticipating the desires of us groundlings. For instance, I can listen to NPR on the radio, or online, or read the stories, or download a podcast, or even listen to it on my cell.

IV. Flashmob ideals:

The intense information exchange of flashmobbing can apply to produsage because a "hive" of people ruminating, creating, drafting, and editing *requires* that intensity and even intimacy. The tangible technologies that make flashmobs possible also make produsage possible, as more access, more knowledge is in the hands of more people. Finally, there's the idea of "always on", which you need for flashmobbing, and makes banding together to respond to/create new products much easier than waiting for someone to report to the think tank at X o'clock AM.