Re: the “customer/consumer” discussion–I agree the term is unpleasant to many because we tend to think that money has to change hands (customer) or that something that is consumed disappears.

I have a different relationship to these terms–customer/user/client/consumer, etc. The way I see it, we are all customers–We’re people who have things we care about–outcomes we want to achieve, jobs we want to get done, experiences we want to have, things we care about. We may be influencers, decision-makers, purchasers, end-consumers, promoters, maintainers, etc. These are some of the many roles we all play as we dance–conversationally and transactionally– with the companies, organizations, products and brands we use to reach our goals and to have the experiences we value.

Customers and content? As a writer, publisher and consultant, I find customer-generated content both thrilling and challenging.

Thrilling because so many smart people will introduce, refine, and build upon each others’ ideas and insights.

Challenging because it’s hard to compete. How can I have the arrogance to charge money for a book or an article? Why would someone pay to read/consume it? What if they want to make derivative works? More power to them! That’s why I’m a big fan of Lessig’s. I love the way he is able to define the different ways we all think about our and others’ IP.. From, “this is great! I want to tell others’ about it!” To, “this is great!, I want to share it with others!” To, “this is great, I want to use it to do my own thing with it and share that with others…”

What I think Lessig gets the most, and that the blogosphere usually models, is the very human need to refer to things, talk about them, steal from them, borrow from them and make them our own.

We are all customers and consumers. We are all creators and inventors. We are all conversationalists and story tellers. There are no arbitrary boundaries. That’s the point!

John, wrt the Ungrateful Dead: we sent out the memo in 1999, but in many cases, it seems not to have reached the brain quite yet. And I wouldn’t agree at all that Mediocrity and Deception have passed their use-by dates. They seem to be going stronger than ever in some quarters.

For example:

Hierarchy is Dead
Mediocrity is Dead.
Deception is Dead.

I’m sure the right terms will emerge as we converse. BTW happy to provide the fava beans, but what will we do with the Chianti? We’ll have to invite someone else….

http://therehearsalstudio.blogspot.com/

I am aware of how problematic the Yahoo! URL was, and that is one of the reasons I made the change!

Chris, I definitely agree that “this sort of language” (or, at least, the way we use it) is pernicious. However, I am not sure we can lay the problem entirely in the lap of social network technology. Unless I am mistaken, Socrates (as Plato characterized him) took Gorgias to task for “pernicious” use of terms whose usual semantics could be chalked up to common sense; so that gives you some idea of the legacy we have of mucking with language in the interest of power!

So let’s try to see what we can say without having to embrace every word in scare quotes. Whether we like it or not, every discussion on this topic is ultimately all about COMPENSATION. We used to have some pretty simple models of compensation, whether it involved picking a bale of cotton or teaching a graduate seminar in quantum physics. However, as the cliche keeps telling us, “The Internet changes everything;” and in the case the change involves a new expectation that you can (or should) get compensated for what you do, WHATEVER that happens to be. By just about any standard of economics or commerce, this is enough to get Spock to raise his left eyebrow off of his cranium; but the purveyors of the “new economy” (verbal quotation, rather than scare quotes) preached that we should relegate those standards to the ash-heap of history. Instead, it was the purveyors who ended up in the ash-heap; but now they seem to be digging themselves out of it! Unfortunately, the old concept of “a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay” may still be in the ash-heap. There does not seem to be much inclination to dig it out and dust it off, perhaps because we have squandered so much of our budget on the “confidence games” (quoting Mark Taylor) of the Internet age that we can no longer afford to live by it!

But I have more of a problem with “customers” and “consumers” — words I try never to use without the scare quotes. In a conversation, are we buying each other’s words, opinions, statements? Are we consuming them? How are bloggers “customers”? How are YouTubers “consumers”? To me, this sort of language is pernicious, as it not-so-subtly undermines the apparently still difficult task of grasping just how radically and fundamentally things have changed with the advent of social networks.

JP, if I am going to come here to your blog and “consume” you, could you at least provide a nice Chianti and some fava beans?

xox,
Hannibal