thanks for the write-up, and the invitation to comment on it. I think the key aspect I'd add here is that we need to draw an important distinction between informational and industrial production/produsage in this discussion: produsage, at least at present, operates almost exclusively in the informational realm, where the preconditions (probabilistic approaches, equipotential involvement, granularity of tasks, and shared content) are most likely to be met. So, it would be entirely possible to continue to engage with physical, material goods in a conventional consumeristic fashion, while dealing with informational commodities through produsage.
So, I wouldn't want to make the claim that produsage is going to replace conventional production/consumption right across the board any time soon (even if it is beginning to make some inroads even into the physical realm) - I do think we're moving (in some cases quite rapidly) towards a replacement of production/consumption with produsage in the informational realm, though.
In fact, I'd argue that production and consumption were never terms which applied particularly well to information and knowledge - neither is the process of knowledge-making ever complete (so that it's misleading to speak of 'production' in its core sense), nor do we 'consume' (that is, use up) information in the way that we consume food, natural resources, or even physical goods.
In spite of this, for the last half-century or more we have applied (physical) production concepts to our understanding of and engagement with information, with increasingly unsatisfactory results. Today, we're seeing that alternative approaches are possible - and produsage as a concept is designed to think through these alternatives.
Anyway, thanks for the plug on your site - looking forward to any further comments. In addition to the definition and brief introduction to produsage on my site, your might also be interested in some of the preliminary papers on produsage I've published and presented, which are also available on the site, at http://produsage.org/articles and http://produsage.org/presentations.
Re: Produsage
Hi Paul,
thanks for the write-up, and the invitation to comment on it. I think the key aspect I'd add here is that we need to draw an important distinction between informational and industrial production/produsage in this discussion: produsage, at least at present, operates almost exclusively in the informational realm, where the preconditions (probabilistic approaches, equipotential involvement, granularity of tasks, and shared content) are most likely to be met. So, it would be entirely possible to continue to engage with physical, material goods in a conventional consumeristic fashion, while dealing with informational commodities through produsage.
So, I wouldn't want to make the claim that produsage is going to replace conventional production/consumption right across the board any time soon (even if it is beginning to make some inroads even into the physical realm) - I do think we're moving (in some cases quite rapidly) towards a replacement of production/consumption with produsage in the informational realm, though.
In fact, I'd argue that production and consumption were never terms which applied particularly well to information and knowledge - neither is the process of knowledge-making ever complete (so that it's misleading to speak of 'production' in its core sense), nor do we 'consume' (that is, use up) information in the way that we consume food, natural resources, or even physical goods.
In spite of this, for the last half-century or more we have applied (physical) production concepts to our understanding of and engagement with information, with increasingly unsatisfactory results. Today, we're seeing that alternative approaches are possible - and produsage as a concept is designed to think through these alternatives.
Anyway, thanks for the plug on your site - looking forward to any further comments. In addition to the definition and brief introduction to produsage on my site, your might also be interested in some of the preliminary papers on produsage I've published and presented, which are also available on the site, at http://produsage.org/articles and http://produsage.org/presentations.
Axel Bruns (cross-posted at theConnectedRepublic.org)