“This data could be really shared with anyone”: Body tracking as indifferent prosumption

• In Event: 3547 - Regulating Consumption, Regulating Consumers

Abstract

Prosumption, the blurring of consumption and production theorized to characterize the 21st century economy, responds to technological change. Machines facilitate prosumption, as in the case of the fast-food kiosk that allows the customer to do the work of the cashier, or the smartcar that eliminates the work of the driver. Less clear, however, is the relationship between technological increases in prosumption and the exploitation of prosumers, as prosumption both gives prosumers more of what they want and increases the value they are able to generate. In this paper, I propose a conceptual framework for understanding prosumption that depends on prosumer consciousness. As a case study, I take body trackers: devices that monitor the user's biometric data, including exercise, diet, and sleep, and integrate it into a network of information. Using interview and online discussion forum data, I show how body tracking prosumers foreground cognitive processes and schema that minimize their awareness of prosumption, instead treating their relationship with the device as a traditional producer/consumer one. I argue that this "indifferent prosumption" represents one possible form of intensified consumer exploitation in the 21st century: consumers become prosumers as they increase their own capacities for profitable labor, yet they fail to experience this labor as onerous or even labor at all. The question of whether prosumption is empower or exploitative thus turns, I argue, on prosumer consciousness, and the orientation of prosumers toward their individual and collective identities as social, political, and economic actors. I discuss the implications for the usefulness and scope of the concept of prosumption, as well as our current thinking about how technology and con/prosumption are related.

Author

• John Bailey, Rutgers University