Prosumer refers to one of two possible portmanteaus formed by contracting either the word producer or professional with the word consumer.¹ Further, prosumer has taken on conflicting spins: the business sector sees the prosumer as a means of offering a wider range of products and services whereas activists see the prosumer as having greater independence from the mainstream economy. It has been suggested that blend (linguistics) be merged into this article or section. ... In public relations, spin is a usually pejorative term signifying a heavily biased portrayal in ones own favor of an event or situation. ...

In 1972, Marshall McLuhan and Barrington Nevitt suggested in their book Take Today ,(p. 4) that with electric technology, the consumer would become a producer. In the 1980 book, The Third Wave, futurologist Alvin Toffler coined the term prosumer when he predicted that the role of producers and consumers would begin to blur and merge. Toffler envisioned a highly saturated marketplace as mass production of standardized products began to satisfy basic consumer demands. To continue growing profit, businesses would initiate a process of mass customization, that is, the mass production of highly customized products. However, to reach a high degree of customization, consumers would have to take part in the production process especially in specifying design requirements. Herbert Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar, professor of English literature, literary critic, and communications theorist, who is one of the founders of the study of media ecology and is today an honorary guru among technophiles. ... 1980 (MCMLXXX) was a leap year starting on Tuesday. ... The Third Wave is a book published in 1980 by Alvin Toffler. ... Futurology or futures studies (called futurism in the United States) is the study of the medium to long-term future, by extrapolating present technological, economic or social trends, or by attempting to predict future trends. ... Alvin Toffler Alvin Toffler (born October 3, 1928) is an American writer and futurist, known for his works discussing the digital revolution, communications revolution, corporate revolution and technological singularity. ... Consumers are individuals or households that consume goods and services generated within the economy. ... A marketplace is the space, actual or metaphorical, in which a market operates. ... Mass production is the production of large amounts of standardised products on production lines. ... Standardization, in the context related to technologies and industries, is the process of establishing a technical standard among competing entities in a market, where this will bring benefits without hurting competition. ... Profit is a positive return made on an investment by an individual or by business operations. ... Mass customization, in marketing, manufacturing, and management, is the use of flexible computer-aided manufacturing systems to produce custom output. ... Usually considered in the context of the applied arts, engineering, architecture, and other such creative endeavours, design is used as both a noun and a verb. ...

In a sense, this is merely an extension or broadening of the kind of relationship that many affluent clients have had with professionals like architects for many decades. Architect at his drawing board, 1893 An architect is a person involved in the planning, designing and oversight of a buildings construction. ...

More recently, the cluetrain manifesto noted that "markets are conversations" with the new economy "moving from passive consumers ... to active prosumers."² For instance, Amazon.com: the cluetrain manifesto (spelled in e. ... Interpersonal communication refers to communication with another person. ... The Digital Revolution describes the effects of rapid drop in cost and ongoing improvement of digital devices such as computers replacing or emulating analog devices, enabling former unthinkable innovations like the WWW. It includes changes in technology and society, and is often specifically used to refer to the controversies that... Amazon. ...

emerged as an ecommerce leader -- partially due to its ability to construct customer relations as conversations rather than simple, one-time sales. Amazon ... supports exchange of information among customers; it provides spaces for customers to add to the site, in the form of reviews.²

However, mass customization has not taken place in most areas of the economy. Most consumption continues to be passive as critics of television, recorded music, and fast food would argue. Indeed, people are generally uninterested in going to the effort of customizing the myriad products that comprise modern consumer culture. In The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, Barry Schwartz argues that diminishing returns from a confusing abundance of consumer choice is producing stress and dissatisfaction.³ Still, one key area of high-customization is taking place: highly-involved hobbyists. Electronic commerce or e-commerce consists of the buying, selling, marketing, and servicing of products or services over computer networks. ... A review is an evaluation of a publication, such as a movie, video game, musical composition, or book. ... Methods and media for sound recording are varied and have undergone significant changes between the first time sound was actually recorded for later playback until now. ... Fast food is food prepared and served quickly at a fast-food restaurant or shop at low cost. ... Barry Schwartz is an American sociologist. ... In economics, diminishing returns is the short form of diminishing marginal returns. ... Look up Confusion in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Confusion can have the following meanings: Unclarity or puzzlement, e. ... This picture shows an exaggerated expression of stress. ...

With customization focused on leisure pursuits, Toffler's initial combination has been largely supplanted by a second pair of blurring roles: that of the professional and consumer. In particular, hobbyists have become ever-more demanding in the pursuits of their hobbies, often rising above the level of dilettante to the point of commanding skills equal to that of professionals. Key examples of such hobbies are: Leisure is time spent in non-compulsory activities. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... A hobby is a spare-time recreational pursuit. ... (ital. ...

• home improvement as illustrated by the rise of hardware stores such as Home Depot
• cooking as illustrated by creation of entirely new cable television channels entirely dedicated to the culinary arts
• photography as illustrated by cameras and camcorders that, often, are on a par with equipment used by professionals
• Free Software and collaborative software as illustrated by Linux and Wikipedia which are claimed, by some advocates, to be challenging established products like Microsoft Windows and Encyclopædia Britannica

This professional slant of the prosumer term is most common in photography which is a field that highlights prosumer trends. Access to professional-level equipment and skills is made possible by combination of factors such as: Home improvement is the process of renovating or making additions to ones home. ... Hardware is the general term that is used to describe physical artifacts of a technology. ... The Home Depot (NYSE: HD) is a home improvement retailer that aims for both the do-it-yourself consumer and the professional in home improvement construction. ... Cooking is the act of preparing food for eating. ... Coaxial cable is often used to transmit cable television into the house Cable television or Community Antenna Television (CATV) (often shortened to cable) is a system of providing television, FM radio programming and other services to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted directly to people’s televisions through fixed optical... Photography is the process of making pictures by means of the action of light. ... A camera is a device used to take pictures (usually photographs), either singly or in sequence, with or without sound recording, such as with video cameras. ... Before the camcorder. ... This article is about Free Software as defined by the sociopolitical Free Software movement; for information on software distributed without charge, see freeware. ... Collaborative software, also known as groupware, is application software that integrates work on a single project by several concurrent users at separated workstations (see also computer supported cooperative work). ... Tux the penguin, based on an image created by Larry Ewing in 1996, is the logo and mascot of Linux. ... Wikipedia (IPA: [] or []) is a multilingual Web-based free-content encyclopedia. ... Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT, SEHK: 4338) is an international computer technology corporation with 2005 global annual sales of close to $40 billion USD and about 64,000 employees in 85 countries and regions which develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices. ... Microsoft Windows is a series of popular proprietary operating environments and operating systems created by Microsoft for use on personal computers and servers. ... 1913 advertisement for the 11th edition, with the slogan When in doubt — look it up in the Encyclopædia Britannica The Encyclopædia Britannica (properly spelled with æ, the ae-ligature) was first published in 1768–1771 as The Britannica was an important early English-language general encyclopedia and is still... Look up Trend in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Trend The word trend has a number of possible meanings: In statistics, a trend is a long-term movement in time series data after other components have been accounted for. ...

• high disposable incomes by some sectors of the population
• increased leisure time, again, for some sectors of the population
• continuously falling prices of ever more advanced products (especially electronics)
• media geared towards for amateurs and hobbyists:
  • beginning in the 1980s with the advent of desktop publishing, a growing profusion of magazines to satisfy specialized interests
  • beginning in the mid-1990s with the advent of the Internet, an even wider range of websites with online forums to pool experience

Yet a third meaning or usage of prosumer is springing up, especially among some activist groups. That is, the producer and consumer roles are being combined so as to exclude (or at least diminish) the role of the corporate producer; thus, rather than generating higher corporate profits from value-added products, producers would, at best, be reduced to supplying lower-profit commodity inputs. Indeed, the more consumer-oriented prosumer spin is irrelevant to many people with diminished disposable income caused by various economic trends such as globalization, automation, and wealth concentration. Identifiable trends and movements outside of the mainstream economy that have adopted prosumer terminology and techniques include: Disposable income is the amount of an individuals total income left after taxes, plus any transfer payments (grants) received from the government or elsewhere. ... In economics, deflation is a decrease in the general price level, or a rise in the purchasing power of money with respect to a large class of consumption goods or services, over a period of time. ... The 1980s decade refers to the years from 1980 to 1989, inclusive. ... Desktop publishing (also known as DTP) combines a personal computer, page layout software and a printer to create publications on a small economic scale. ... A collection of magazines A magazine is a periodical publication containing a variety of articles, generally financed by advertising and/or purchase by readers. ... The 1990s decade refers to the years from 1990 to 1999, inclusive. ... The front page of the English Wikipedia Website. ... Gaia Online, the largest English language forum-based community as of April 2005 — powered by a modified version of phpBB. An Internet forum is a facility on the World Wide Web for holding discussions, or the web application software used to provide the facility. ... Activism, in a general sense, can be described as intentional action to bring about social or political change. ... A corporation is a legal person that exists quite separately from the natural persons who work with and for it. ... Value-add, usually referred to as value-added, is the increase in value or price of a product due to a modification of the product or its marketing in some way. ... The word commodity is a term with distinct meanings in business and in Marxian political economy. ... Globalization (or globalisation) refers to the worldwide phenomenon of technological, economic, political and cultural exchanges, brought about by modern communication, transportation and legal infrastructure as well as the political choice to consciously open cross-border links in international trade and finance. ... Automation (ancient Greek: = self dictated) or industrial automation or numerical control is the use of control systems (e. ... Wealth condensation is a theoretical process by which, in certain conditions, newly-created wealth tends to become concentrated in the possession of already-wealthy individuals or entities. ...

• a Do It Yourself (DIY) approach as a means of economic self-sufficiency or simply as a way to survive on diminished income
• the voluntary simplicity movement that seeks personal, social, and environmental goals through prosumer activities such as:
  • growing one's own food
  • repairing clothing and appliances rather than buying new items
  • playing musical instruments rather listening to recorded music
• use of new media-creation and distribution technologies to foster independent media (see Indymedia); many involved in independent media reject mass culture generated by concentrated corporate media
• self-sufficient barter networks, notably in developing nations, such as Argentina's RGT have adopted the term prosumer⁴

These blurrings of the roles of consumer and producer have their predecessor in the cooperative self-help movements that sprang up during various economic crises e.g. the Great Depression in the 1930s. See also: DIY Network, a cable TV network. ... Voluntary simplicity (or simple living) is a lifestyle considered by its adherents to be a sustainable, ecologically sensitive alternative to the typical, western consumerist lifestyle. ... Indymedia Logo The Independent Media Center (aka Indymedia or IMC) is a global network of independent journalists and alternative media. ... Popular culture, or pop culture, is the vernacular (peoples) culture that prevails in any given society. ... Concentration of media ownership (also known as media consolidation or media convergence) is a commonly used term among media critics, policy makers, and others to characterize ownership structure of media industries. ... It has been suggested that Swapping (barter) be merged into this article or section. ... A developing country is a country with low average income compared to the world average. ...

External links

• Turns of Phrase: Prosumer - business-oriented definitions of producer/professional and consumer
• February 2004 Datacloud on "Consumer" - relating Toffler/cluetrain and noting examples of corporate prosumer activity
• Review of The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less - from January, 2004 Christian Science Monitor
• Argentina's RGT - The World's Largest "Usury-Free" Barter and Trading Network - activist-oriented usage of prosumer
• De (hernieuwde) ontdekking van de prosumer - overview article on Prosumerism (in Dutch)
• DIY happy - A website devoted to helping people reach economic self-sufficiency through daily coverage of numerous DIY projects.
• Wikihowto - A wiki website aiming to make know-how free, providing consumers another option - not just to buy, but create it themselves.