Prosumption: Evolution,revolution,or eternal return of the same?

Abstract

Prosumption, the interrelated process of production and consumption, is increasingly obvious everywhere, but especially on the internet where people “prosume,” for example, Facebook pages, Wikipedia entries, and Amazon.com orders. But what is prosumption? Has it evolved out of recent behaviors? Or, is it new and revolutionary? Or, is it what we’ve always done? In fact, it is all three. Beyond dealing with these questions and re-conceptualizing much of what we do as prosumption rather than as either production or consumption, we reflect on the future of prosumption, as well as on the continuing utility of traditional concepts, paradigms, theories and methods that were created to deal with epochs, phenomena and processes seemingly focused on production or consumption.