The new buzz word flying around the blogosphere actually originated with Alvin Toffler in his book The Third Wave
Word Spy defines prosumer as:
A person who helps to design or customize the products they purchase ("producer" + "consumer"); A person who creates goods for their own use and also possibly to sell ("producing" + "consumer").
Newt Gingrich credits Toffler with providing a bit of the spiritual impetus behind his political vision. Recently Gartner Fellow Ken McGee interviewed Alvin Toffler. During the exchange McGee asks Toffler about the concept of "prosumer":
Gartner: You're rather critical about economists and the manner in which the art/science is practiced, what it measures, but particularly what it doesn't measure. In that regard, after the discussion about deep fundamentals, you talk about the "prosumer." Can you provide a very brief definition of "prosumer" please, but also, why is it important to capture prosumer activity from an economic perspective?Toffler:
We invented the word prosumer many years ago in my book The Third Wave. It's a composite of production and consumption, obviously, and we argue that there was, prior to the invention of money, people who lived without money. Everybody was a prosumer, growing their own lunch, sewing their own clothes, building their own shack and so on. So it was a pre-monetary or a nonmonetary economy. However, more and more prosuming populations (moved over to) become part of the (consuming or) money system.
So there were fewer and fewer people living off their own production. But prosuming hasn't gone away. In fact, we now know and we understand the importance of this goes back at least to the '60s or earlier, and Gary Becker, the Nobel prizewinning economist, was one of the first ever to make the case about this. We track 10 or a dozen pathways by which the activities of people in the nonmonetary economy have impacts on the money economy, and we argue that you can't understand what's going on in the money economy unless you also take into account the interactions between these two.Gartner:
Are you surprised that prosuming, if quantified, might rival the size of the money system (more than $50 trillion)?Toffler:
Yes, now that's not our guess; that's somebody else's guess, but nobody really knows. Nobody really knows, I think, because nobody monitors this appropriately.Gartner:
Do you think we will reach a point where prosuming will be measured?Toffler:
Yes, I do. It's inevitable because it's growing, instead of it disappearing, which is what the early assumptions were, including ours. It's growing.
The video below takes a hypothetical look at the futuristic prosumer culture.(Hat tip:Tech Crunch) (I swear the narrator sounds like Ricky Ricardo reincarnated) Prometheus, mentioned in the piece, is a character from Greek mythology, a god of forethought who created humans and enhanced their lives against Zeus' wishes.
