Do you do it yourself?
May 24, 2009 at 8:16 am 1 comment
As said in previous blogs, with the surge into the new media, we are more involved. We are pushing the producers to give us what we want, we are writing our own biased and sometimes not really noteworthy news, adding to and editing our on encyclopedias and challenging the experts as amateurs. We are doing what we want to do. The newest edition to this is DIY.
Do it yourself baking, do it yourself sewing, do it yourself paper making, do it yourself add to a computer game. Jenkins (in Bruns 2008) notes that in the new media aspect, DIY generally refers to produsers who form their own group cultures and design products of their own accord.
DIY stems from open source products and information that pushes people to make new creative and innovative products. It aims to give people the ability to build on knowledge and products. The produsers are now working individually and collaboratively to design and produce products for the whole. DIY also provides a podium for interaction in a social networking manner, creating their own online culture. This further develops the produsers to enhance the product or information through harnessing their collective intelligence.
Bauwens argues that information relating to product is what will be the most affected by DIY design and collaborative intelligence. An example used throughout the unit has been that of the computer game, The Sims, in which 90% of the content is consumer produced. The game provides the users the ability to mould the game to how they want it and it has proved amazingly popular.
Currently, DIY design and culture is a relatively new concept. However, practitioners have predicted that this concept is likely to expand and develop in the future as more people and producers adopt the model.
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alycem | May 24, 2009 at 12:13 pm
I completely agree with your views on how individual’s greater involvement in the production of creative products is a reflection of the growing new media environment. And your use of examples of this I think highlights that well, and the fact that amateurs as Produsers create a greater means for individuals to express themselves in a collaborative way. I also agree that as the role of produsers evolves it emphasize how the harnessing of the collective intelligence of professionals and amateurs or ‘Pro-Ams’ provides a platform for the enhancement of products and information. This also ties in with Bruns’ argument that the arrival and gradual embrace of Produsage clearly has the potential to significantly reshape our existing cultural, commercial, social and political institution. I like how you used The Sims as an example of how the consumer role in content production can be quite significant. This also underscores Hartley’s ideas that Central to DIY culture is the circulation of ideas: this is not just a precursor to activism, it is activism-writing is action, open publishing is a direct cultural intervention. However I think that DIY culture has been established for quite some time now and it is evident that it is continually evolving.