Prosumer and Product Design Through Digital Tools

Currently, the growing interest of users and consumers in the participation of the creative process has led to the typical “maker culture” practices. Consequently, there is an increasing number of prosumers - users who produce what they consume - who want to be part of the design and transformation process of the products. In order to achieve it, prosumers have begun to use digital tools that greatly facilitate this task. These tools could vary depending on the number of users involved in the process and the freedom of participation that they have on the product. It has been presented a number of qualitative classification of cases involving the end user, individually or collectively, that has influenced as a prosumer in the product design process. The objective is to study the use of digital tools in the creative phase within the design process according to their different levels of participation with respect to the final product. The cases are shown in four tables according to the number of users involved in the process and their level of participation. In these tables, other important aspects related to the study of digital tools such as the type of contribution of the prosumer to the product or the design phase in which he participates will be identified. In conclusion, this work will show if there is a pattern in the use of digital tools according to the number of users involved in the process and the freedom of participation that they have and which are the reasons for their use

The Information Economy and the Labor Theory of Value

This article discusses aspects of the labor theory of value in the context of the information industries. First, taking the Temporal Single-System Interpretation (TSSI) of Marx’s labor theory of value as methodology, the paper calculates economic demographics at the level of socially necessary labor time and prices of an example case. Second, the paper questions the assumption that the labor theory of value cannot be applied to the information industries. This paper tests this hypothesis with an analysis of the development of labor productivity in six countries. The paper concludes that the labor theory of value is an important tool for understanding the information economy and the peculiarities of the information commodity

Not Belonging to one’s Self: Affect on Facebook’s Site Governance page

This article makes a contribution to a growing number of works that discuss affect and social media. I use Freudian affect theory to analyse user posts on the public Site Governance Facebook page. Freud’s work may help us to explore the affectivity within the user narratives and I suggest that they are expressions of alienation, dispossession and powerlessness that relate to the users’ relations with Facebook as well as to their internal and wider social relations. The article thus introduces a new angle on studies of negative user experiences that draws on psychoanalysis and critical theory

Gaming-playing on social media: using the psychoanalytic concept of ‘playing’ to theorize user labour on Facebook

Political economists have argued that user activity on corporate social media is regarded as labour that appears playful and fun but is exploited and sold to advertisers for profit maximization. This article begins with the working assumption that such user labour on social media constitutes a form of playing. It is theorized through a psychoanalytic perspective on the term as developed by D. W. Winnicott and André Green. The notion of gaming–playing is put forward to account for set interface structures on Facebook that resemble a game as well as free-flowing dimensions more akin to playing. Some user discourses on Facebook are analysed through this prism. A psychoanalytic conceptualization of user labour as playing allows one to analyse both positive discourses that emphasize Facebook as a space for creativity, exploration and the unknown, as well as negative discourses that critique the platform with regard to lacking privacy controls or data ownership. Both discourses are conducted in a playful manner that creatively utilize a sense of user agency in relation to others and Facebook itself, but often remain without consequences

‘Contextualizing and Critiquing the Fantastic Prosumer: Power, Alienation and Hegemony’

Abstract The ‘prosumer’ has emerged to become a central figure in contemporary culture. Through the melding of production with consumption, both mainstream and progressive analysts conceptualize prosumption to be a liberating, empowering and, for some, a prospectively revolutionary institution. In this article, these fantastic associations are critically assessed using an approach that situates prosumption activities, including contemporary online applications often referred to as ‘cocreation’, in three social-historical contexts: capitalism as a political economy dominated by mediated abstractions; capitalist society as a hierarchical order; and alienation as a pervasive norm. Among other conclusions, we find that prosumption (particularly its Web 2.0 iterations), constitutes an emerging hegemonic institution; one that effectively frames and contains truly radical imaginations while also tapping into existing predilections for commodity-focused forms of self-realization