As a trend, do you think produsage will last? Do you think commercial forces will find ways of exploiting it, or perhaps the ways people are involved will end up being short-term? Conflicts in the communities? Flagging energy/interest? Successful sites get bought out? Just a trend? Or the future of the Net? – What does your crystal ball say? (we must bear in mind this is speculation!)
Whilst I understand Bruns point that people will get tired of contributing to various websites for free, I think that a lot of people make the choice knowingly to contribute in the first place and will continue to. Although people don’t get credit for making their contributions, often what they choose to contribute on is surrounding their own interests. An example of this is Wikipedia. The contributors don’t get paid, but they get an opportunity to show off their knowledge and write about something that they are interested in. As more and more people get comfortable with technology, the ones that do get tired will be replaced with more youthful well-informed produsers. If not, people will find new and interesting ways to produse to their advantage.
I think that the biggest danger to produsage will be commercialisation. I wouldn’t know how many pop-ups or junk would get through to my computer without the blockers or antivirus, because so many still do. I think people will get sick of feeding into the hands of big corporations once they start to take over small but successful web.2 sites. A loophole in the terms of use of facebook has been revealed this week that once you upload pictures, they belong to facebook to use however they want. People are recognising that huge companies can exploit people through the internet and thousands have boycotted facebook for that reason.
I think that when the internet thudded down upon our lives in 1989, the impact was huge and it still continues to grow and adapt at a great rate. I think if produsage gets too big or even runs out of steam, another huge technological phenomenon will occur with the internet that may be beyond my imagination, as produsage was years ago. I have faith in the technophiles to keep things interesting for us, and give us new challenges.
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What do you mean "youthful" Lucy?! Can't crinklies get on board? As to the rest of your comments, they are intersting. It is very easy for us to think that OUR technology is the last word, so I'm pleased to see that you are not in this group. People adapt, and as you say, tire of things. It seems to me this takes us back (yet again) to that old psh-pull relationship between producer/consumer but with the extra interference of people who were BORN produsing!
ReplyDeleteKeep up the good work Lucy and look out for my email.