It is in this statement which I think sums up a lot of which Bruns is trying to talk about in his book. In the first half of the book, we looked at how the Internet has brought about a newfound freedom for society. Through the use of blogs people are finally able to have a voice concerning the media and with wikipedia, people are able to help and interact more now than ever with the creation and updating of information, but it doesn’t stop there. Sites like wikipedia are only the tip of the iceberg though.

In chapter 9, Bruns shows us media based networks like Flickr and Youtube, where more “produsage” is created than just text. Content like photos and video are created and posted to these networks where other can view, respond and in some cases add to the content, which helps to create an even larger social interaction between the users. We have seen the creation of social networks now such as Myspace and Facebook, in which the soul purpose for the user is to be “social”.

Society even works e-commerce through sites like Ebay, and Amazon where you are able to leave reviews on either the product or seller, letting others know which ones to steer clear of. It is due to these sites that society is able to be more connected now to each other than ever before, but in the long run, is that really a good thing. 30 years ago you had long conversations with al of your neighbors, but today you’re lucky if you know their first names.

Today it seems like people barley have time to go out and grab a bite to eat, but they will spend hours talking to friends on Myspace or discussing the different photographs that have been posted to Flickr. So as asked by Bruns, where as the traditional public sphere has not disappeared, I would defiantly say that we are seeing it compete against the creation of this new digital public sphere in which we are being emerged in.

First, educators must teach students how to use the outcome of produsage. It’s a little difficult to grasp, because, if done properly, using produsage creates more produsage, and so it could be implied here that there is no “end” to the course. If we are to engage ourselves in produsage, our assessment, insight and attached meaning to that produsage creates something new, which can be mashed up again and again. From an industrial standpoint, this would be hard to swallow. For academes, it could be seen as a new form of media literacy. The concept of “ongoing” produsage may be a difficult adaptation when compared to the pedagogy of current courses and projects as being “complete.”

The second challenge is to harness literacies in order to participate in produsage. Many academes currently have a low esteem for produsage and therefore resist teaching how to use it. The shift from “sage on stage” to “guide on the side” isn’t universally accepted.

For those who resist, he issues this warning:

If teachers are not prepared to re-imagine their role in this way (and perhaps particularly if they are not) then other guides to the information available ‘out there’ will inevitably emerge from the wider knowledge space itself; this, then, would give teachers even less of an opportunity to influence the learning processes of their students (346).

The paradigm shift suggested by Bruns (as opposed to a revolution or a disruption) suggests that educators “must learn to become guides,”(345) that the academy collaborate with the produser community (350) and that curriculum become open source.(351)

Bruns’ view of the future of academia poses some questions. What would happen to our systems of assessment if educators became peer reviewers? How will produsage affect peer-reviewed academic articles posted in scholarly journals? Will open sourcing create an ad-hoc academy which resists all forms of accreditation?

The ability for Bruns to say education needs to encompass the produsage model strikes me as a bit techno-utopian, to borrow a term from our instructor. Bruns discusses various models of production – journalism, education, shopping, etc. – going through a casual collapse and just fading into the sidelines while the world accepts the produsage models of the information related to these and moves on, but he discusses these aspects as if the world will accept the changes without conflict. Yes, he mentions the media dinosaurs trying to hold onto their monopolies, but even then it’s an “adapt or die” based discussion. It will take more than saying education should embrace new models to get technology into classrooms before college and, although I may have missed it, I didn’t see Bruns discussing any way to raise funds or convince district superintendents to allow students to use their laptops or cell phones for classes.

As apparent from my earlier posting, this is the part that is of special interest to me as a professional animator / creative director.

The citizen in me applauds the opportunities for the growth of the collective intelligence of the hive but the specialist in me is aware of just how problematic collaborative, creative processes can be and how mangled the results can be too.

Burns, quotes Trendwatch succinctly describing a more than likely scenario, “GENERATION C .. will continue to create heaps and heaps of crap which, at best will be appreciated only by inner-circle friends and family”. But Burns also holds out hope that in a probablistic approach: “the larger the number of contributors involved in the collaborative creation of art and creative work, the higher the likelihood that from it will emerge works of genuine artistic value”.

However, who defines such value? Burns in giving the example of Flickr and Jpeg, illustrates the fact that different communities uphold traditional, professional standards for valuation or emphasize valuation based on communally shared interests outside of artistic criteria.

Evaluation is complicated by a number of factors – the monetary incentive, who stands to gain by the specific produsage activity, what and who are behind the technological supports for produsage.

Thus an absolute evaluation of an artistic product will not be possible even if the product itself seems to be complete and finite. Anyhow, this is not even the case as the very nature of produsage, favors process over production – a significant difference between produsage and other forms of creative collaboration, according to Burns.”Remixes” or “Mashups” – are communal alterations to an endlessly evolving “text” in the form of music or visuals or increasingly hybrid media.

The value of the individual works or the instances of the individual work (the artefacts of the process)are less important than the wider generalized effect of “demystification of the creative process, a growing expression of the communal dimension of expression”

Burns likens this increased participation of society in the creative process as a revival of the spirit of folk art – the isolation and self-referential insulation of “high art” is countered with this participatory, communal artistic creativity.

In fact, main stream media is also challenged, or subverted as alternative modes of creation and distribution on the internet are made possible.

Burns writes (Technological change) “.. has opened up the possibility for the rise of a new participatory media culture which may set in motion a more gradual overall shift away from commercially driven media culture and towards the rediscovery of a more vernacular culture of folk creativity”.

The problem with this statement is that there is an assumption that folk creativity is not motivated or sustained by any economic concerns.

To be fair, elsewhere Burns does provide examples of the economic models / influences at work in the produsage contexts of MMOGS (massively Multiplayer Online Games) and MUVE’s (Multi User Virtual Environment).

Because produsage is a threat to established institutions of production, learning and accreditation (including media companies, universities), what we are likely to be surrounded with not examples of free flowing produsage but produsage as it is defined in juxtaposition with its resistant forces.

What is happening on Web2.0 is data – to be mined, for nuances to be read, for theories such as Burn’s theory of produsage to be examined / critiqued with empirical data.

Bruns introduced me to the term Folksonomy, that decentralized process of produsage or user generated taxonomy. Brun describes folksonomies as the “process of collaborative and social tagging, social classification, and social indexing” and further declares the importance of examining the practice as a credible alternative to traditional taxonomies developed by experts in their field.

Brun goes on to declare, folksonomies allow the emergence of “a kind of folk intelligence” and later he suggests that, the phenomena described as mass amateurization doesn’t necessarily result in a reduction in the content quality.

While the promise of using produsage labor models for the generation and indexing of knowledge is certainly intriguing from a business stand point, it certainly does conflict with last weeks discussions on the idea of reputation.

How can we have confidence in the information we seek and use on a daily basis without some form of knowledge checks and balances if for no other reason than to edit the grammatical content of the knowledge shared by these amateurs?

I can certainly understand the role and even acceptance of this folk intelligence when applied to the concept of ‘Life Caching.’ These sites, primarily provide a whimsical outlet for the display of ones favorite things (images, videos, music, and in some cases ideas or thoughts).

Brun does consider the impact of the issue of copyright infringement as a result of the produsage community, which plagues the creative media today. He points out that the aggressive and confrontational approach of the music and movie industries to policing the copyright violations has been less than triumphant.
Again Brun challenges the media industries in the section titled “The Audience Is Dead” when he quotes Pesce’s reference to “the Big Lie of Big Media: if it isn’t produced professionally, the audience won’t watch it…. No assertion could be farther from the truth.” He goes on to explain that as the current processes of media production and distribution begin to parish a new criteria for quality should emerge along with a greater diversity of content.

Bruns observes the overbearing threat. “Educational systems, too, are under increasing threat from a Generation C whose produsage activities can no longer be contained through the artificial scarcity imposed by traditional production and accreditation processes” (344). I do agree that some of the processes in academia right now seem artificial. For example, the standard Rhetoric 1302 syllabus at UTD has this line in bold print under the research paper assignment heading: ***DO NOT USE WIKIPEDIA***. Rather than explain why students shouldn’t cite it directly, as Wikipedia tactfully does in “About Wikipedia,” there is a warning label in the style and tone of the tag on a hairdryer (DO NOT USE IN SHOWER) or the tag on a mattress (DO NOT REMOVE THIS TAG). These age-old caveats are laughable to us, but I believe such a line in a syllabus seems just as laughable to students. Or, they are confused by the warning’s lack of explanation, wondering why they can’t use a seemingly comprehensive, lucid, and convenient source of information.

A hybrid culture means a divided culture. (Bruns does a great job of describing the “new form of digital divide” in Chapter 13.) Humans by nature are adverse and slow to change. Colleges and universities specifically are steeped in hundreds of years of tradition, thus I think they face a special challenge of adaptation to the model of learning Bruns describes. Even more specifically, the humanities are at a disadvantage compared to newer fields of education, such as communications, computer sciences, and informatics. I think the misunderstanding between teacher and student about issues such as copyright, plagiarism, sharing test answers, using someone else’s notes, “doctoring up” an older brother’s history paper, and the use of Wikipedia has to do with this divide.

In a sense, if we can accept the term “literacy” as viable in today’s digital environment, some of those who are in a position of authority as teachers are actually LESS literate than those they preside over. In the best case scenario, the literate teach and enlighten the illiterate. In a worst case scenario, the literate students deceive the illiterate teacher and withhold the truth that they actually know the system better than the teacher. Bruns also notes that, when it comes to literacies and produsage capacities, there is the possibility of a shifting “balance between teachers and learners” in which learners come out on top.

In the dilemma I describe, there is an interesting case of humans losing themselves in their own created machines (in this case, the educational system). Bruns seems to argue that if education doesn’t change, if it clings to hierarchical banking models of learning in the classroom and attaches faux-intimidating warning labels to syllabi and assignment sheets, the system will change the institution, and perhaps disassemble it entirely. “If teachers are not prepared to re-imagine their role in this way, then other guides to the information ‘out there’ will emerge [giving] teachers less of an opportunity to the influence learning processes” (346). Bruns’s prediction expresses my concern over the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement and “Instructables.” If teachers do not adapt, they will be circumvented by the system and their own students. If the institution does not adapt and instead defers to “official status and brand recognition” (353), the University could become the “Wikiversity” (350).

The call Bruns issues to education’s fortresses is needed, but it cannot be issued from an advocate of produsage, let alone the guy who wrote a book about the concept. It must be someone from within the walls of academia—however “breached” (345) they might be. It must be someone who is not of Generation C, Generation M, Generation Next or whatever we are calling it—someone who is truly a converted traditionalist. I also don’t think Bruns properly addresses what happens to assessment when teacher and learner are leveled. He mentions it briefly, but not enough to satisfy me, nor the A-hungry student who dreams of the flawless transcript. Perhaps this is a feature of the PRESENT generation of college students, but ultimately grades aren’t just part of the system—they ARE the system. Finally, I can agree that teachers need new literacies, but I cannot agree that it “requires simply the extension of traditional literacies to these new modes of collaborative content creation” (339). How do we do this? Bruns says through critical reading, understanding biases introduced by some models of production and produsage, and assessing quality of resources on that basis. But these seem to be common skills in any English classroom. Can it really be “simply” this? Transporting skills from an old model?

(sorry—had a lot to say!)