User:Natasa Siencnik/notes/schaefer/

Abstract

Mirko Tobias Schäfer: Made by Users. How Users Improve Things, Provide Innovation and Change our Idea of Culture, Problems and Perspectives, 2004.[1]
See also: Mirko Schäfer Bastard Culture! User Participation and the extension of cultural industries, Dissertation 2010.[2]

"Software based products are able to get copied, modified or developed further. Competent users have the necessary skills, tools and networks to develop modified products which are originally invented by corporate companies. The collaborative work of competent users is providing innovation and this could create an interactive market, where product definitions are possible only for a moment before these artefacts become modified or reshaped and that this raises questions concerning copyrights and democracy. Modifying and redesigning of products is a cultural practice in digital age. In conclusion I argue that an interdisciplinary action between social sciences and computer sciences will be necessary to understand the cultural practices in the digital age. Further more a society wide discourse on copyright, software patents, access to information and the distribution of information will help to formulate terms, models and a theoretical framework for transferring a valuable concept of cultural freedom into the 21st century."

Redesigning and Reusing
- software-based products can be copied, modified, developed
- competent users have the skills, tolls and networks to modify products
- those products might originally be invented by corporate companies
- in return companies will use the ideas of competent users
- using technology means defining culture
Article describes
- how collaborative work of competent users is providing innovation
- an interactive market, where products are likely modified or reshaped
- this raises questions concerning copyrights and democracy
- interdisciplinary action between social sciences and computer sciences will be necessary to understand the cultural practices in the digital age and to formulate terms, models and a theoretical framework for transferring a valuable concept of cultural freedom into the 21st century
Technology changes Culture
- computer technology, information and communication technology (ICT)
- ICT became a common tool in our daily life
- 1980s introduced new cultural values and ways of cultural production
- computers are able to do anything that can be formulated as algorithm
- programming enabled people extend the function of their computers
- today access to ICT seems to be common
- cultural practice of sharing and distribution is spreading with the technology
- profoundly affecting the organization of our democratic societies
Discourse on Technology and Users
- users are now able to develop media content by themselves
- former mere monolithic dispositif becomes an interactive, complex system
User Activity and Production based on:
- ability to program the computer
- broad access of common people to computer technology
- possibility to connect with other users, join communities
New Communication Systems
- networks of developers, users, fans and active citizens
Innovation through Modification
- consumers try to find other users for solving problems
- every product using computer technology is open to modification
- once published software-based products enter a second stage of development
Technological and Social Innovation
- generation and distribution of new knowledge is not only innovating technology
- it also creates community and culture > meaningful use of technology
- broader access, cultural freedom and independence from monopolistic companies
- this is often the drive behind free/open source software projects and net activism
Networks for organization and representation
- computer is both a machine and medium of communication and representation
- combines ability to produce things with the ability to communicate
Interactive Market?
- modification not necessarily reserved to enthusiastic consumers
- companies might improve products or offer tools for their modification
- car tuning > demand for radical customized products
- but innovation often pushed into the fringes of legality
- interactive market would provide better products, more competition
- big companies try everything to keep inventors out of the game
Problems and Perspectives
- using software-based products offers new forms of cultural production
- opportunity for reshaping cultural freedom and identity
- distribution in the digital age means reproduction
- necessary consequence would be the revision of our copyright laws
- possible scenarios of relations between companies and user communities
- Ignorance > companies most likely ignore that users modify products
- Acceptance > in several cases they appreciate the contribution
- Confrontation in several cases lawsuits are stopping modified products
Software as Cultural Resources
- transparency (open source), collaboration, distribution (weblogs), culture of peer review are important feature of Internet culture, that turn out to become a menace to content industry and software monopolies
- ubiquity of Internet culture is only a problem to profiteers of the old regime
- Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) > negative
- raising the issue of cultural freedom and democracy by analyzing the new cultural practice and the technologies in order to provide a pragmatic approach

Literature

Bertolt Brecht Der Rundfunk als Kommunikationsapparat
Manuel Castells The Internet Galaxy
Michel de Certeau The Practice of Everyday Life
Stuart Hall Encoding/Decoding
John Fiske Television Culture
Henry Jenkins Interactive Audiences
Lawrence Lessig The Future of Ideas

Discussion

recent example for distribution > Apple App Store
Astronomy > technology complex but affordable > normal people can be part of the process
Crowdsourcing > algorithm cannot be used for that > users tagging pictures for Google
Amazon > Mechanical Turk marketplace for work > Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs)
Virtual economics > Reputation economy on the Internet