Tagged: production

Opinion

Can the revolution in the music industry tell us anything about the future of capitalism?

Christmas is coming. The John Lewis ad is out. Consumerist-bonkers-day Black Friday is around the corner, and as I write, hundreds of container ships are slowly inching their way across the seas from China to the West, bringing a cargo of all the things we are told we need this year. Toys-wise, apparently this year’s must-have presents include an “interactive Thunderbirds Tracy Island” and a “‘skate and sing’ remote control Elsa” (apparently she’s out of Frozen but, being childless, I...

Opinion

the iPad favors passive consumers not active prosumers

by nathan jurgenson I’ve written many posts on this blog about the implosion of the spheres of production and consumption indicating the rise of prosumption. This trend has exploded online with the rise of user-generated content. We both produce and consume the content on Facebook, MySpace, Wikipedia, YouTube and so on. And it is from this lens that I describe Apple’s latest creation announced yesterday: the iPad. The observation I want to make is that the iPad is not indicative...

Political & Economic Sociology / Science & Technology / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of Organizations & Work / Video Resources

Conference Summary Part I: The Internet as Playground and Factory

The New School held a conference last week that may be of interest to many Sociology Lens readers, so I have decided to devote this week’s entry to sharing some notes from the conference. The implosion of work and play was the most recurrent theme in the panels that I attended.  The term “playbor” was frequently used to describe the product of this implosion.  Panelists generally seemed to assume that playbor was a relatively new and increasingly prevalent phenomenon.  However,...

Gender & Sexuality / Science & Technology / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance / Video Resources

Augmented Reality: Going the Way of the Dildo

by pj.rey While the term “augmented reality” uttered in a sexual context might immediately conjure the perennial problematic of the boozed, buzzed, and befuddled (commonly referred to as “beer goggles”), more nuanced analysis may prove fruitful.  Fellow Sociology Lens news editor, nathan jurgenson, recently argued in “towards theorizing an augmented reality” that we need to anticipate an ascending paradigm where “digital and material realities dialectically co-construct each other.” To anticipate this new reality, I argue that we ought to turn...

Social Movements / Social Change / Social Psychology & Lifecourse / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of Organizations & Work

prosumers of the world unite

by nathan jurgenson Lately, we have been doing lots of work, for others. For free. Millions of users of sites like Facebook and MySpace are clicking away at their profiles, adding detailed information about themselves and others. “We” are uploading content to sites like Flickr, YouTube, the microblogging service Twitter and many others, and our labor creates vast databases about ourselves –what I previously described as a sort of mass exhibitionism. Facebook’s profit model is built upon an ownership of...