Objects in Flux - RMIT Research Repository - RMIT University

Objects in Flux
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2005). Beyond this narrow domain numerous recent publications have
examined the broad economic benefit to be gained from practices
of consumer production. Often cast as ‘open innovation’, consumer
production has been recognised as a cost-effective alternative to commercial
research and development (Chesbrough, 2006; Goldman &
Gabriel, 2005; Thrift, 2006; Von Hippel, 2005). In the book Democratizing
Innovation, Eric von Hippel cites examples of user innovation
from fields as diverse as windsurfing and open source software, claiming
that practices of consumer production are becoming increasingly
common within contemporary society (2005).
Likewise, Charles Leadbeater and Paul Miller suggest we are in the
midst of a ‘pro-am revolution’ where ‘innovative, committed and
networked amateurs working to professional standards’ are creating
new organisational models that challenge traditional corporate and
state modes of production (2004, p. 9). En-masse, consumer activity
has been conceived as a swarm or cloud of productive potential that,
until recently, has remained largely untapped (Corney, Torres-Sanchez,
Jagadeesan, & Regli, 2010; Gloor, 2006). The general consensus
amongst these texts is that this new era of consumer production has
been instigated by a dramatic shift in communication technologies. In
particular, the emergence of the Internet has allowed for distributed
media production and knowledge sharing on an unprecedented scale
(Benkler, 2006).
It is worth noting, however, that this revolution has been a long time
coming. In the 1972 publication Adhocism Charles Jencks imagined
a ‘resource-full computer’ that would allow for ‘decentralised design
and consumption based on individual desire’, a combination of
‘Hippie consumer tactics and the space program’. Jencks states that
‘With an electrified consumer democracy, the time spent and the cost
of consumption would plummet, and the impersonal subsystems of
large corporations would be repersonalized by combining them ad
hoc towards specific ends’ (1972, p. 55). Jencks and Silver propose
adhocism as a panacea to forces of determinism, specialisation and
bureaucracy within modern society that frustrate natural creativity
and self-realisation (1972, p. 19). While envisaging a new wave of
‘consumer democracy’ where individuals actively participate in the
construction of their environment, Jencks and Silver also recognised