Prosumerism

Gary Becker [1965]:

Nonworking time may

now be more

important to economic

welfare than working

time, yet the attention

paid by economists

to the latter dwarfs

any paid to the former.

with electric

technology, the

consumer will

become a producer

His prosumer

philosophy

was first

popularized

in China.

He is currently the

#2 bestselling

author in China.

Activities created

outside of the profit

economy that add value to it.

DIY [do it yourself].

UGC [user generated content].

A product

consumer that also

customizes said

product in

innovative ways.

Consumer/Producer.

Napster and iTunes

Napster took music

out of the money

economy and transferred

it into the prosumer

economy.

Napster and iTunes

Then iTunes used the

Web to move music

downloading back into

the money economy,

creating a very viable

business that did not exist before.

Napster and iTunes

Zuckerberg was

first noticed for

making a prosumer

mp3 app that would

find songs based

on your likes and dislikes.

X-Box 360

Microsoft introduced the

connect plug-in to the Xbox 360

which allowed movement based

control of the game. When

users started improving on

it, the company decided

to start offering support to the users,

creating a sort of ecosystem of innovation.

Consumer innovation

In the U.K., they did a study

and they found that

2.9 million users in the U.K.

did some form of consumer innovation, but

only 2% try to create some form of patent or

intellectual property protection.

‘The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those

who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.’

- Alvin Toffler