The notion of the social factory coincides with the creation of an interac- tive consumer–viewer, one prepared to devote time and energy to devel- oping the skills necessary to participate in an increasingly interactive media economy. The list of such skills is becoming increasingly long and includes the ability not only to operate a computer and surf the internet but also to master an array of devices including VCR programmers, cell phones, palm pilots, video games, and so on. To the extent that such effort generates useful demographic feedback to producers (as in the case or interactive devices that record, save, and aggregate viewer preferences), it is productive not just in the sense that it facilitates the consumption of an increasingly technologically sophisticated array of media products and services but also insofar as it allows producers to, as one business futurist put it, “save costs by off-loading some of the duties of consumer interactions onto consumers themselves” (Mougayar 1998, 174). Work that used to be the province of producers is being redefined as that of the active consumer, who is increas- ingly becoming responsible for developing a unique demographic profile and relaying the information it contains to producers. It is perhaps not insignificant that the work off-loaded onto the consumer is referred to by marketers as a “duty” of interaction. The notion that consumers are increasingly required to take on a broad array of interactive responsibilities neatly ties in with the forms of “governing at a distance” elaborated by the Foucault-inspired literature on governmentality. The interactive consumer is the market analogue of the “active” citizen inter- pellated by the proponents of the neoliberal postwelfare state. As Rose (2001, 164) puts it, the model of the active citizen is that of the “entrepre- neur of him- or herself” who “was to conduct his or her life, and that of his or her family, as a kind of enterprise, seeking to enhance and capital- ize on existence itself through calculated acts and investments.” It does not seem farfetched to extend this analysis into the realm of consumption, where the consumer is increasingly encouraged to make the investment of time and energy it takes to be an interactive consumer responsible for his or her own viewing and consumption practices and experiences.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 02:45:58 +0000
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