Unsourcing

= "Unsourcing", is the McKinsey-speak for the Crowdsourcing method pioneered by Wikipedia [1]

Definition

Aaron Peters:

"unpaid, P2P mediated work that replaces previously renumerated work". [2]

Discussion

1. Babbage, in The Economist:

“Some of the biggest brands in software, consumer electronics and telecoms have now found a workforce offering expert advice at a fraction of the price of even the cheapest developing nation...it is their customers themselves...."Unsourcing" as the new trend has been dubbed, involves companies setting up online communities to enable peer-to-peer support among users. Instead of speaking with a faceless person thousands of miles away, customers' problems are answered by individuals in the same country who have bought and used the same products. This happens either on the company's own website or on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and the helpers are generally not paid anything for their efforts. As might be imagined, the savings can be considerable. Gartner, the research company, estimates that using communities to solve support issues can reduce costs by up to 50%.” (http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/05/future-customer-support)

2. On the employment of crowdsourcing in the interests of profit, Christian Marazzi writes,

“(post-Fordism extends) the processes of value extraction to the sphere of reproduction and distribution...evermore explicitly, in both economic theory and managerial strategies, the externalization of production processes is spoken of... “crowdsourcing”. These crowdsourcing strategies, leaching vital resources from the multitude (commons-based forms of production) represent the new organic composition of capital, the relationship between constant capital dispersed throughout society and variable capital as the whole of sociality, emotions, desires, relational capacities (as well as plain technical knowledge and ability) and a lot of “free labor”.

...

“...the increase in profits over the last 30 years...(heralds) a new type of accumulation...external to traditional productive processes. This new constant capital, unlike the (physical) machine system of Fordism, is constituted by a totality of organizational disciplinary systems that suck surplus labor by following citizen-workers through every moment in their lives, resulting in a lengthened and densified workday (the time of living labor).” (http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/author/default.asp?aid=34812)

More Information

• discussion aby Aaron Peters: http://www.opendemocracy.net/openeconomy/aaron-peters/unsourcing-does-free-labour-ultimately-require-free-goods-too