Prosumption

Description

Ignacio de Castro Arribas:

"As Weber (2004, pp. 72–73) ascertains “Open source software users are not consumers in the conventional sense (...). Users integrate into the production process itself in a profound way.” This is the confirmation of the early Toffler (1984, p.267)´s perception of the “(...) blurring of the line that separates producer from consumer”. Users´ production entails consumption (hedonic rewards) and frequently consumption entails production as well. In peer production users are indeed both consumers and producers, or prosumers as introduced by Toffler (1984) and later adopted by Tapscott and Williams (2008) in the context of peer-production.

The idea of prosumption is by no means new, as Senior already observed more than a century and a half ago “Economists have in general opposed consumption to production” (Senior, 1836, p.53) although there are productive and unproductive consumptions.

"Productive consumption is that use of a commodity which occasions an ulterior product" (Ibid., p.54): there is a positive externality to consumption. Differently from network effects, it is not just the utility of other users what is positively affected, it directly affects production. Like in the rural path case, extra users do not only entail network externalities, there is also an externality that affects positively the production of the rural path. A new user joining the path implies network effects: because the rural path net expands (to cover her location) increasing the utility of the rest of the users (as a result of the expansion of the net). Simultaneously the incorporation of this extra user entails a productive externality: the user contributes to the production of the path with the mere consumption he does by walking it. Differently from the network effect, this “prosumption effect” increases production rather than utility. A differentiation should be made between network effects and prosumption effects. While they might reinforce each other they are essentially different, not only because the former affects utility while the later affects production, but because for prosumption effects to take place a network is not necessary. Even if there is only one person in the world she can still give raise to prosumption effects when contributing with her walking to the creation of a rural path of which she is the only user. Conversely for a network effect the size of the network must be greater than one.

The novelty of peer-production relies on its capacity to internalize these consumption externalities, both network and prosumption effects. Effectively aggregating small and disperse contributions to production and hence incorporating use as a productive factor." (http://wikis.fu-berlin.de/download/attachments/59080767/Arribas-Paper.pdf)

Source

• Paper: Productive Paradigms in the Digital Era. Ignacio de Castro Arribas. Contribution for the 3rd Free Culture Research Conference, 8 and 9 of October, 2010

URL = http://wikis.fu-berlin.de/download/attachments/59080767/Arribas-Paper.pdf