Read Chps 1-7 of Axel Bruns’s book
Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage . Leave your comment below.
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Read Chps 1-7 of Axel Bruns’s book
Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage . Leave your comment below.
Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond is a book that really points out just where the future of media and text has gone. Burns shows people know just what I have been telling my class this whole semester, which is that the Internet has become the new source in which media has started to be distributed. We, the audience are now the ones being able to participate and decided just what get put other in this new medium of metadata.
Take chapter 5, where Burns discusses the use of blogs, and how they have brought about “Citizen Journalism” meaning that the user or blogger has become a new sort of journalist. In the past, journalism, whether it was by newspaper, radio or television, had always been closed off or restricted participation from its audience. Now though, through the use of blogs, the news has become “open source”.
That doesn’t mean that stories that you may read on about on blogs are always from first hand encounters, but it does mean that if someone is writing on a story where they may have had some first hand experience in, that they are not restricted to the same rules that the larger media conglomerates are. Where they may only tell us what they want us to hear, we are more likely to get the full story from someone that writes about it on their personal blog.
Now as Burns points out, bloggers are not journalist in the way we might know them as, but as the book deems them “citizen journalist”, they have opened up a door to where thanks to the internet, whether it be a blog post or a video on youtube, users are now able to interact with one another and finally able to voice their opinions so others may hear.
This plays right into the next chapter where Burns talks about wikipedia. It is that interaction with users that has made wikipedia so strong. As mentioned in Burn’s book and last week in Everything is Miscellaneous, we discussed how in the old Encyclopedia Britannica, that the information that you are reading is limited or restricted, but with wikipedia, that is very much the opposite.
As most know, wikipedia is open to all to add, delete, or change the info that is written on a certain topic. Now does this mean that everything that we read in a wiki is right? No, it doesn’t, but for every person that has added something wrong to an entry, there is someone right there to fix it, and even add to it. That’s why we are drawn back to wikipedia. It ‘s not just the fact that the information just keeps growing, but yet again, it’s the interaction that we get as users being able to participate in the stuff that we were once shut off from.
Axel Burns provides a cohesive way of looking at the multiplicity of phenomena on the internet, as a movement away from an industrial model of production to a collaborative production model (Produsage).. where the process predominates and product is almost just the artifact of this process.
The user is increasingly stepping beyond the role of consumer and is becoming a participant in the creation of media and knowledge.
While the many instances and contexts of these occurrances seem disparate, they collectively raise questions related to not only how we use the internet or what we can do in this networked space but it also raises philosophical questions that turns the searchlight back on the way we have always done things or looked at things, our forms of legitimation of knowledge for instance, or our concept of creativity.
“many of those who choose to attack Wikipedia for its lack of committment to the ‘truth’ are really engaged in a much larger, losing battle defending objectivity”, says Burns (120) That is, this is yet another opportunity to extend the debate on this matter launched by Descartes. What is truth .. according to whom?
This brings up the question of experts whose status is very much in question in the networked economy. Experts signify elitism, and orthodoxy, top-down hierrachism harking back to the industrial mode of prodction. This goes against the grain of populism and eclecticism, setting up a pro-am (professional – amateur) divide.
Burns beleives that ‘It is worth engaging in some detail with these problems of reconciling experts and folks as they reappear in virtually all fields of produsage and, more importantly, in various forms of collaboration with the traditional professional model’
I agree with him totally and would infact focus on one key area where expertise is taken for granted as a necessary pre-requisite – artistic production.
While art critics, art galleries, film producers, famous directors, distributers may be considered dispensable on the internet – there is no relinquishing of the idea that an artistic product is produced by talent, specialized knowhow and a nurtured creative process. Is this assumption itself no longer valid?
The internet has opened doors for amateurs to gain and use the knowhow and skills of trained artists and designers; Peer to peer evakuation or mentoring from experts is all happening online .. developing a new generation of ‘artists’ whose works are interminably evolving.
The use of the word ‘artist” itself is problematic – maintaining Burn’s terminology, one could speak of the “hive” that engages itself with various forms of artistic produsage.
Can we expect that in their engagement too, we see (as in the knowledge industry) a creation of a space that is “pluralistic, multiperspectival, and thus necessarily conflicted? (220)
Where and how will borders be drawn between formality and informality, between intention and accident, noise and meaning?
In reading the first part of Axel Bruns’s book, _Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond_, I was struck by the produsage imperative to take possession of metadata wherever we can find it and to make use of metadata in any way that benefits us humans. The urge to make everything metadata has implications relevant to Heidegger’s concept of the “standing-reserve” and also Gunkel’s cautionary words against an unethical treatment of technology as a tool solely for human use. Bruns seems to take an instrumentalist approach to computer technology. He urges developments in web search filtering systems that “extract patterns from the apparent chaos of user-generated metadata which are of direct relevance and use to us” (195). This is clearly an anthropocentric perspective, and it also shows an underlying inclination to order perceived chaos (which human-natural phenomenon Weinberger pointed out in _Everything is Miscellaneous_).
Bruns really reveals his notion of technology as a mere tool (indeed, a powerful, revolutionary tool) in the following passage: “[extraction of patterns] is a matter simply of enhancing and extending the natural processes of knowledge organization which are common to our everyday lives” (195). In this passage, the notion of man extending himself into the digital world and using it for his own gain seems to be instrumentalism. Bruns documents an instrumentalist approach in other places, too. When I read about Google’s ability to take the browsing practices and link patterns of web users’ searches and incorporate that data into its filtering system (174), I was really reminded of Martin Heidegger’s fear that man, in his “challenging-forth” of the world into technology, runs the risk of making himself into a resource, or “standing-reserve.” With Google and other search engines, we sometimes aren’t even aware that our browsing practices are being “harnessed and harvested” for the benefit of the greater good of internet users. Even internet users are a “valued resource” (109) in the produsage community, which depends on open participation. User practices can be “mined” by Amazon.com (175), which verb I thought was really indicative of Bruns’s (or the produsage system’s) anthropocentric outlook. The idea of “mining” conjures natural resources vividly and harkens back to Heidegger’s example of the windmill vs. the hydroelectric plant.
To another extent, the notion of a machine that knows us and knows our likes/dislikes, either through the software application Bruns mentions on page 177 OR through our personalized workspaces and blogs — this notion would really frighten Heidegger and it would make Gunkel question the ethical implications of a machine that “acts human” but performs better than most of our friends/spouses in predicting our tastes. For Heidegger, this would be an ultimate fear — that we could one day “challenge-forth” ourselves into “standing-reserve” (resources) for the machine’s use as a conversational partner!
Another way Bruns shows an instrumentalist approach is in his criticism of _Encyclopedia Britannica_ as a “black box model of content production which affords no transparency about the process to its consumer” (129). Here, obviously the paper-based methods of the predigital world are out, but one can see a prioritization of transparency in any public “knowledge space” (101) and a preoccupation with “making visible” sources of knowledge and the systems by which knowledge is organized. This shows a human desire to not only make everything into knowledge or usable content for the produser, but it also shows a need for control over how the knowledge is organized. This last point might seem ironic, since the premises of produsage are a sacrifice of privacy, ownership, and individual control (20). In discussing all these issues throughout the semester, I have been struck by a number of ironies like this.
Also, when Bruns writes, “[extraction] is a matter simply of enhancing and extending the natural processes of knowledge organization” (195), I start to wonder if he is more opposed to Weinberger’s idea of the miscellaneous than in cooperation with it, as I originally thought. When Bruns argues for folksonomies over taxonomies (in fact, he argues that folksonomies will probably take over whether we know it/like it or not, considering the sheer quantity of content), I keep thinking of Weinberger and the miscellaneous third-order world of digital information. However, when Bruns indicates that there exists a “natural process of knowledge organization,” that seems to clash with Weinberger. I suppose the folksonomies themselves are a way of ordering information. A folksonomy is not “natural” to the information being organized. Bruns shows a challenging-forth approach to knowledge, and he has not yet considered the ethical implications of his argument, though I think he mentioned he would do that in Chapter 10.
In Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond, Axel Bruns spends a great deal of time explaining what anyone who uses the Internet on a regular basis already knows: its collaborative, non-hierarchical structure, in which everyone theoretically has access to the means of production, is bringing about a radical change in media and communication. He calls this new process “produsage,” and contrasts it with the hierarchical structure of industrial production, in which the consumer has only very limited participation, if any, in the production process. In produsage, the consumer of content is also a producer, and there is an ongoing feedback loop, which means that no product, or artifact, of produsage is ever finished. Open source software and Wikipedia are the prime examples he gives; in both of them, users are able to actively participate in changing the product to fit their own needs, and the artifacts grow and change and improve rapidly as long as there are enough interested parties contributing to them.
To me the most interesting part of the reading (which I haven’t finished yet) is its implication that produsage changes the idea of objectivity, that with Wikipedia there is no longer an objective truth, but rather an ever-changing idea or representation of truth that anyone has the ability to change. Bruns quotes David Burn as saying “We come from a cultural heritage that says things have a ‘nature,’ and that this nature is fixed and describable. We find more and more that this idea is insupportable—the ‘nature’ of something is not by any means singular, and depends on where and when you find it, and what you want it for.” With Wikipedia, users have access not only to an article about a subject, but also, if they’re interested, previous versions of that article and the discussions that went into creating it. Wikipedia doesn’t claim to be the ultimate word on any subject, but rather implies that no such word is possible, that truth is a process of creation and discussion. I’ll be interested to read what Bruns has to say about what the effects of this change might be, both positive and negative. If I were to guess, though, I would say that he will probably be almost entirely positive. Bruns seems to have a very techno-positive, not to say techno-utopic, attitude towards the changes he discusses. In the very beginning of the book, Bruns states that in the new network paradigm, “producers and users of media content are both simply nodes in a neutral network and communicate with one another on an equal level.” Two words in this quote set off alarm bells in my brain: “neutral” and “equal.” Putting aside the fact that Bruns’ attitude toward technology seems more laudatory than neutral, I had to think back to Heidegger and his idea of the dangers of technology. Heidegger saw that technology was by no means neutral, but rather posed a very distinct danger to human beings in its threat to convert them into standing reserve. Bruns’ idea of conceiving of man as “nodes in a neutral network” seems to me to be dangerously close to what Heidegger was warning of. As for users of the internet being equal, if it is true, it will be the first time in the history of mankind that equality actually existed in any form other than a rhetorical ideal to strive towards. It’s certainly true that networks are destroying traditional hierarchies of power, but surely it’s important to be aware that new hierarchies will develop from the rubble. The idea of the digital divide is the obvious example, and there are surely other, more subtle ones to think about. Hopefully in the later chapters Bruns will address some of the real and potential dangers of the network, and get beyond his apparent idealization of it.
Alvin Toffler, the author of “Future Shock” and “The Third Wave” once said “The economy is no longer built on muscular labor. New ideas and other intangibles are becoming the central part of production, not the secondary part.”
Axel Bruns (could a futurist have a more industrial name?) suggests that with the change to produser, our world will be a different place. In fact, that already seems to be happening. I think that his view of technology skews heavily toward anthropocentric instrumentalism, and by recognizing the consumer as co-producer, a co-signer of technology, he has introduced us to the Heideggerean nightmare of standing-reserve. After all, isn’t this about anthropocentric attempts to master technology? Amazon practically buys stuff for you before you even know it exists. Academia shifts radically and the student becomes co-produser of pedagogy. The earth flattens, all of the secrets of closed societies are revealed, and everyone is empowered. Google “mines” all of our browsing patterns and we know the mind of God.
It’s pretty heady stuff.
Even though he acknowledges that existing systems will (at least to some extent) co-exist, Bruns left me with the impression that our acclimatization to this new produser age is imperative, lest we become Philistines. You are either in or you are out. In some ways, it could be seen as a sort of enslavement rather than liberation. Networked knowledge is the social capital of the 21st century.
On the other hand, Eisenstein suggests that after the advent of the printing press, students questioned the need for sitting at the feet of the master when they could learn through books. So it might be said that the future holds a kind of Hegelian (or Marxist) synthesis of the two ideologies, rather than a paradigm shift.
Axel Bruns begins with the argument that the traditional industrial Production Value Chain model of Producer-Distributor-Consumer no longer works in the new User-led collaborative social software environments such as blogs, Wikipedia, and YouTube.
Bruns goes on to introduce a new term coined produsage. And uses this hybrid of the two words “producer” and “user” to describe this further shift towards a new networked information economy in which “consumers turned users” band together into information communities congregating around an information commons.
Bruns discusses the advancements related to Open Source Software as one of the better examples of produsage and the role it has played in the development of computer software and the Web. Brun sites examples such as Apache software, Firefox Web browser, and Linux. Brun credits the emergence of Open Source to commercial software development deficiencies. I personally use Open Source Software (Joomla!) for my fledgling podcast directory.
Bruns strikes comparison of Open Source software products to more conventional commercial software products (closed source) and declares that the Open Source model is more efficient because of its non-hierarchical structure of organization and governance. Unlike corporate entities that rely on the traditional software-development organization of adding more programmers, Open Source relies on a small nucleus of specialists and an army of professionals, pro-am, and amateur contributors with multifarious “roles, skill, interests, and investments in the project.”
I find his discussion on “News Blogs and Citizen Journalism” most interesting, as Brun, attributes the rise of “citizen journalism” and “news blogging” to its influence as a “corrective and a supplement to the output of commercial, industrial journalism” with the added bonus of challenging the media as opinion leader.
The gatekeeping qualities of industrial news gathering and distribution, coupled with the journalists narcissist mentality of providing us with the news we should have (all that news that’s fit to print) versus the news we want has driven the news seeker to look for other news information venues and produsers of content.
“Scooping the story” takes on an entirely different meaning when Brun introduces us to the “Gatewatcher” idea, involving the kneadiing or “limited development” of the story for submission to a produser community.
Doesn’t this Citizen Journalism lead to an inferior quality of information down line?
Is credibility still king in citizen journalism or do people still turn to main stream new sources when breaking news occurs?
To be continued.
I got home last night to find my internet was down so I couldn’t post this – it was still down this morning so now i’m in the library posting.
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This book begins by mentioning the shift society is currently making; from an industrial model for product development to an act of content creation that involves “large community of users”. This new generation is causing the collapse of copyright due to the way in which content creation is approached.
In the old model, the producer and consumer where in two completely separate spheres, seperated by the distributer. The word consumer suggets the users are not an active part in the production and in the development of that product. The only feedback mechanism in place is ‘buy or not buy’ which creates a system in which users can merely express their want of coke over pepsi (or vise versa) .
Bruns says we’ve moved from usage to produsage. A social and interactve element now exists that could not have existed prior to the internet. This interactivity has spawned intercreativity; people have jonied together to collaborate on projects – it is now within our capablilities for us all to be producers.
We have moved from the user being at the bottom of the production chain, to the produser being in the center – content coming in, the user/producer machine collaborates on it, and content is put out. The passive user becomes an active participant. In some situations this requires no actual effort – on Amazon.com you simply need to buy something to be an active participant, adding data to their book-suggesting alogorythm.
Wikipedia is a key example of this new form of production – anyone and everyone can participate. Everyone has access to authorship – anyone can be a creator. This mindset is one used by open source software developers. Open source software is proof that a set heirachy is not needed to develop incredibly complex software; instead heterachy’sdevelop that are every-chaning, constantly in flux. In such systems the involvment of an ego-stroking mechanism generally aids in development – many websites adopt a Karma system to do this. This creates a tension between an ego-centric and network-centric wayof thought which is incredibly interesting.
Citizen journalism is also on the rise. This has changed the way news is processed. In the past ‘gatekeepers’ watched what news articles went out, picking and choosing what they think the public should see. Now we are all gatewatchers – every single bit of news is put out there and people vote on what they think is important. This is changing the order from ‘fillter then publish’ to ‘publish then filter’. Grassroots media is becoming more and more popular.
The one problem I have personally noticed however is that more people involved = crappier news content. Digg.com has arguably become a fairly watered down news resource due to the huge userbase. A similar thing is happening to Reddit.com right now. I remember a while ago when I would read every single story on reddit, thinking ‘wow, I cant believe every single thing on the front page is so interesting’. Now its become a haven for LOL cats and the like. This may simply require us to redefine our idea’s of news media; the interesting and the funny may occupy the same place, breaking out ofour traditional ‘news hour, cartoon hour’ mindset towards media (I understand that sub-categories you can edit are available but I’d guess a huge amount of the users aren’t logged in, and of those that are only a few of them will have ‘customized their reddit’. Also I have a guilty pleasure in seeing lol cats so I have that sub-category checked. There I said it.) . An interesting line is “perhaps the end of journalism simply means carrying on and amplifying the conversation of people themselves.” Conversations of people are never purely about the news, but often include something funny they saw.
This books taking me forever to get through and I’m only a bit into chapter six, I’ll post an account of six and seven soon.
haha i just saw this and it, plus the comments, say a lot http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/78spf/do_you_ever_watch_the_tv_news_and_think_i_saw/
I know this post is late – HUGE apologies for that.
In reading the first half of Bruns’s book, I couldn’t help but focus on the potential for produsage in journalism. Yes, citizen journalism is a great new side effect of the ability for the masses to become producers, prosumers, produsers, etc., but I can’t help but wonder what happens to the “truth” when the story segments into what the community finds important.
No, the old guard, “Big 6,” or whatever we are calling traditional media today didn’t bring everything to the table. As Bruns points out, the commercial interests alone stop some media outlets from getting the whole story out, particularly when the story is about the parent corporation. But what exactly changes when a community writes about what that community is passionate about? Is that community not just as guilty of not putting all we need to know out there?
This puts the responsibility of seeking out valuable information on the shoulders of the masses – the same masses that fall on different sides of the digital divide, that may or may not know how to conduct an effective search on the internet, and that may or may not understand that what happens across the world does, eventually, come to alter the daily life of the average citizen.
Citizen journalism is great, yes – it brings down the Stephen Glasses and Jason Blairs of the world, but as it stands now, citizen journalism is exclusive to those who understand and have unlimited access to the tools of produsage. I guess I’m torn between the excitement of opening the gates and allowing anyone in and the fear that not everyone who could contribute will know how to get through them or that not everyone will understand that all citizen journalists are not created equal.
The system has been broken for a long time, but we seem to be in a gap right now. How do we teach those who would contribute how to best use their tools and influence without squashing their freedom? Then, how do we ensure that all who need information – be it about a war, the gangs threatening their children, or the best brownie recipe – have access to all information, even that which they may not have thought to look for when they sat down at their computers?