Prosumption

While prosumption (the interrelated process of production and consumption) is a primal process and has always been ubiquitous, we have entered a revolutionary “new world” of prosumption in both the material, and especially the digital, world. Prosumption is conceived of as a continuum ranging from prosumption-as-production (usually thought of as “production”) to prosumption-as-consumption (usually seen as “consumption”). It is associated with a new stage of capitalism—prosumer capitalism—that has increasingly come to control the process and to exploit prosumers. Key to the new world of prosumer capitalism is a new, extreme, and more “magical” form of exploitation—“synergistically double exploitation.”