You're a Prosumer and You Don't Even Know It

The article, Production, Consumption, Prosumption by Ritzer and Jurgenson (2010) explore the concept of prosumption and its increasingly evident appearance in our lives more so today than ever before. Prosumption according to Ritzer and Jurgenson (2010, p. 14) ‘prosumption involves both production and consumption rather than focussing on either one’.

An overused example to explain prosumption is McDonaldisation. This term was developed by Ritzer (1993) but the concept began with Henry Ford and his development of the assembly line for producing cars. The most efficient way of completing a task is found and then broken down into smaller ones. This is efficiency; the first of the four dimensions of McDonaldization according to Ritzer (1993). This task is then completed the same way every time and this is another dimension, predictability. Another is control refers to the irreplaceability of humans and machines. The last dimension is calculability and means quantity over quality.

(Image: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/what-is-mcdonaldization-theory.html)

McDonalds is a global producer and their products are the same in every country. Just like people in every country are prosumers.

When you think about it we do a lot of the work that the McDonalds ‘restaurant’ should be doing for us. We wait a long time in a line to order our own food and then wait again for our food to be made and handed to us. We then carry our own food to a table that we need to find. If we want anything else we need to get it ourselves. There is no waiter to serve us like at other restaurants and it can be said that we are part of the production in creating our meals.

 Toffler (1980, cited in Ritzer & Jurgenson 2010) believed that Prosumption was a well-known in pre-industrial societies. Although today with the web 2.0 (provider generated information) prosumption is at its finest and clearly exemplified in many thing we do in our day to day lives. Do you have a Facebook account? If so, then you are a prosumer. Like McDonalds you do all the work like post photo’s, video, text, information and links and also share others information.

I am a prosumer when I post this blog.

But what happens to all the information that you supply without payment on Facebook. Ritzer and Jurgenson (2010) suggest that Facebook sell your information to advertisement agencies, but today, it was found here that Facebook handed over data to the Australian government. This is an example of uberveilance.

Are you happy about being a Prosumer?

References

Ritzer, G 1993, ‘The McDonaldization of Society’, Sage Publications, London

Ritzer, G. & Jurgenson, N, 2010, ‘Production, Consumption, Prosumption’, Journal of Consumer Culture, Vol. 10, no 1, pp. 13-36

White, A 2013, ‘Facebook hands over data on hundreds of Australians in first half of this year’, The Herald Sun, 29 August, Accessed 28 August 2013, <http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/facebook-hands-over-data-on-hundreds-of-australians-in-first-half-of-this-year/story-fni0fiyv-1226705818264>