The fourth example of participation, systematic engagement, is supported by a platform designed to act as an organized system that accommodates or even encourages adaptive behaviors. This platform is comprised of a set of fundamental guiding principles established and structured to enable an individual to engage in creating or modifying a product. It allows for these types of changes to occur without the need for the time, money, or intellectual application typically required to develop a product by an originating enterprise. Platforms are the most sophisticated method for enabling the systematic engagement that has initiated the recent shift in the making process.

The OpenSource software development movement is the best example of systematic engagement involving modern technology. OpenSource is the creation of a base framework for an operating system or software application.
[The Linux Mascot from file-extensions.org] This framework is freely distributed to the public for the express purpose that other individuals develop enhancements and integrate them back into the source — anyone can write code for the application, and that code is available to anyone else to modify or enhance. Additionally, these software developers contribute to a larger community through collaboration in online discussion forums. This activity is unique because the majority of commercial software applications are under the centralized control of an originating enterprise and can only be developed by in-house employees.

OpenSource is an excellent example of systematic engagement because it blurs the lines between the adapting enterprise and the originating enterprise. One could argue that the success of several OpenSource initiatives, such as Linux and Firefox (Mozilla Project), are excellent examples of adapting enterprises undergoing a metamorphosis into originating enterprises. These are early signs of a possible shift to a platform-based approach to develop products for commercial endeavors. Some larger institutions, namely the tech industry, show the early signs of embracing this movement (such as IBM). But for most, the thought of placing a product entirely in the hands of its constituents is nauseating.

Until recently, the systems and media available for published self-expression have been reserved for professionals like writers and broadcasters. This chasm between the average person and the professional existed because of the significant costs involved with production and distribution. In the past several years, personal technology has enabled non-professional individuals to begin to bypass traditional outlets and to make their own self-declarations — the third example of participation.

In the early 1990s, a few individuals began creating frequent journal-like posts (in reverse chronological order) on websites that they called Web Logs. After several years, the behavior spread and the tools to publish became easier to use and more prevalent. Linking to posts by other bloggers became essential to the process.

The blog was born.

While several weblogs have existed since the early days of the World Wide Web, the real boom was ushered in with the creation of Blogger by Pyra Labs in late 1999.
[Graffiti on boxcar from traingeek.com by Steve Boyko] Blogger was, and still is, a very popular tool that allowed the mainstream public to publish their thoughts on the web on a recurring basis. One of the many characteristics of blogging software that contributed to its growth was its automation of web-publishing capabilities placed in the hands of non-experts. It didn’t require its users to code HTML, but rather provided pre-designed web page templates. It also automated the process of managing files and uploading them to a web server. Google’s acquisition of Blogger in 2003 helped legitimize the technology and spread the behavior. Today there are many tools that enable this self-declaration, from blogging tools like Movable Type (and TypePad), Word Press, and Tumblr to services likeFacebook, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube.

The idea of self-declaration is not limited to digital technology, nor is it new. Graffiti is one example of public self-expression that has been present in our society for a very long time. These behaviors and principles are universally understood. These are rich cultures with traditions and rituals. Their expression is the adaptation of a medium (spray paint symbols and artwork on public buildings) that was not intended for this use. Additionally, the actions of the adapting enterprise, in this case graffiti artists, are covert and underground because their efforts are considered artistic by few and criminal by most.

The second example of participation is group assembly. Group assembly involves ad-hoc gatherings or coordinated actions by groups of people using technology originally intended to enable one-on-one communication with known individuals (such as text messaging or conversations on mobile phones). However, when the members of adapting enterprises use these technologies, the participants in the group often do not know each other. While this alternative use of technology is not explicitly impossible or prohibited by the originating enterprise, it is certainly unexpected. The motivations for such activities vary from entertainment and performance art to political protest.

When I originally did this research for my thesis work at CMU back in 2002-2003, flash mobs were just emerging. For those not familiar, a flash mob is a gathering of individuals coordinated online using technological tools such as email, mobile phones, or bulletin boards (back in the day).
[Pillow Fight Club from boston.com by Boston Globe] They agree to suddenly assemble at a specific location for a short period of time, typically just a few minutes, and then disperse immediately. Usually, there is an assigned task, like asking a humorous question of an employee or purchasing a random item at a store where the flash mob is occurring. I thought that flash mobs would be the quintessential example of group assembly, but then it mostly died out. Other than the occasional pillow fight, I guess I was wrong. That being said, other forms of group assembly did emerge — meet ups and social networks.

Howard Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs was on to this phenomenon early on:

Channeling the past’s masters of public pranks and ad hoc performance art like Merry Pranksters, Suicide Club, or Cacophony Society, whether or not flash mobs will regain popularity remains to be seen. The emergence, and recent dominance, of social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter lend credence to the importance of group assembly. These tools mostly enable group assembly online, but the participants can be considered adapting enterprises. Social Networks utilize technology to enable behaviors that weren’t previously possible — connect, communicate, and collaborate with with a massive number of individuals. As I’ve said before, the core behaviors are part of human existence but the scale at which these action can occur is entirely new.

The power of these tools and behaviors is evident in the recent political protests in Iran. A culture once silenced and controlled by its own government is now
[Mousavi Protester from boston.com by Damir Sagolj/ Reuters] using Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to circumvent censorship and exert political force on its leaders. This is group assembly on a mass scale.

Services like Meetup facilitate physical interactions that were born online. As you can see, these new interactions are made possible by adapting enterprises (the creators of Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and MeetUp) as well as the members of these communities) were neither possible just a short time ago nor were they ever successfully enabled by originating enterprises.

In my previous post, I described the phenomenon of participatory culture and how institutions are no longer in control (see Making With People). There are several examples of how this participation manifests itself in the world, and the first examples I’d like to talk about are hard-hacking and soft-hacking.

HARD-HACKING
Hard-hacking is the tangible sibling to soft-hacking, which I’ll describe in a moment. Hard-hacking occurs when a person makes modifications to a physical object after it has been introduced into the world. It involves altering the physical nature of an artifact to add, enhance, or change the intended functionality of that product. Hard-hacking also occurs in a lesser form when a person obtains a hack created by another individual and applies it to their artifact — they weren’t the original hacker, but they imposed the change made by someone else. In either instance, they changed a product in a way that wasn’t intended by the original designer, stepping beyond the complacent consumption likely desired by the originating enterprise.
[Slammed Civic from corey m stover on flickr] For example, sub-cultures surrounding the modification of cars and motorcycles is rich with examples of functional enhancements to products and the social interactions that accompany these cultures. The hard-hacking of motorcycles, such as the Harley-Davidson, consists of ‘chopping’ up the bike — giving birth to the term Chopper — to alter both its performance and aesthetic. Similar behaviors exist among some young Asian-Americans in Southern California’s import car racing culture where members make performance and aesthetic modifications to import automobiles, developing rich social communities around their activities. Formerly, AOL chat groups existed for groups like the O.C. Racerz and Import Scene (see Victoria Namkung’s fantastic chapter, “Reinventing The Wheel: Import Car Racing in Southern California” in the book “Asian American Youth” by Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou).

SOFT-HACKING
Soft-hacking, on the other hand, involves the modification of digital objects after they’ve been introduced into the world. Modifications can include the writing or alteration of software as well as reforming digital images or video. Like hard-hacking, some people exhibit a lesser, yet still important form of soft-hacking. This occurs when a person doesn’t create their own soft-hack, but instead acquires someone else’s for their own personal use. In both instances, people are making changes to a product that wasn’t intended by the original designer.
[Original iPod from “Using An Original iPod In A Smart Car” at bioneural.net by Bruce McKenzie] For example, the early days of Apple’s iPod were inundated with soft-hacking. The device was originally intended only to store and play music files, but savvy owners of the product quickly discovered the alternative uses it afforded. People created their own software to extend the capabilities of the device in ways Apple had not, originally, intended. Many software applications existed (and still exist) that enable file and music transfers from the iPod to other iPods and computers that don’t use iTunes. This is not how Apple intended it’s product to be used, but these tools have been around since the iPod’s introduction. More recently, people have “jailbroken” Apple iPhones to use on carrier networks other than AT&T. A vibrant community exists at iPodHacks where these activities are tracked and announced to interested parties.

It’s important to note that the social communities that surround these activities are as interesting as the hacking behaviors themselves. It enables the individuals with common interest to share thoughts, ideas, and their passion for the activity. It also supports the addition of new members as well as the propagation of the activity.

I’ve talked about the four epochs of making over the past several weeks: Making By People, Making For People, and Making Without People. We’re now facing another epoch in making, a shift where institutions no longer completely control the means of production. People now take over the reigns of production, much like our past, but mass distribution is still a possibility. And in many cases the institution is still involved in the making, but as a facilitator rather than a controller. This is an epoch I call Making With People.

At the heart of this shift is participation. But this type of making is fundamentally different than what institutions are used to. It’s a special type of participative process where people modify things in ways that extend them into unintended design spaces. They adapt and merge things into entirely new possibilities, with or without consent from the original creator.
[So Cal 1970 Choppers by bcmacsac1 from flickr] These initial acts of change become widespread and groups of people formalize to support ongoing efforts. The groups eventually grow, and their efforts are exposed to much broader audiences, brining in new members that are often less savvy than the original members. Eventually, large institutions that are the original creators take notice and begin to respond (sometimes positively, but often negatively). This cyclical process ensures growth in the movement while fundamentally changing the process and actors who do the making.

There are two primary actors in this process.

• Originating Enterprises: Typically large institutions that possess the means of production, usually for commercial purposes.
   
  
• Adapting Enterprises: Groups of people that interact with, and adapt, the product of the originating enterprises by reshaping them for their own needs.
   
  

At this point, I’m describing the shift that’s been underway for several years now (more prominently now than in the past decade or two). The implications are significant, particularly for today’s businesses that only know control. The weak institution that are unable to adapt and embrace these new behaviors will perish, while those that can adapt will thrive.

What’s particularly interesting about this is that I’ve already addresses an important point that is likely a factor: Everything Old Is New Again. The behaviors driving this emergence of participation by the adapting enterprises are not simply a product of the rapid, technology fueled society in which we live today. Rather, they are ingrained behaviors long present in humanity only being made visible again in recent times.

In the coming weeks I’ll share examples of how this shift is hapening.

In this third epoch of making, making starts to look familiar to most of us. I initially described Making Without People as: mechanized manufacturing and the assembly line place the means of production into the hands of the enterprise, initiating the concept of "the consumer."

As these communities, cultures, and societies continued to advance, another significant shift in the process of making took place—a movement toward mass efficiency. When organizations emerged—the enterprise—they took over most making, further distancing people from the process.

This shift coincided with the Industrial Age (Toffler’s Second Wave), which stripped away the intimate interaction between the individual and the purpose of the object being made—essentially removing the individual from the process altogether.
[Women on Assembly Line Stamping Hams from Wisconsin Historical Society on flickr] Mechanized manufacturing processes displaced making from the community of use to centralized remote locations. This displaced making by known community members to unknown people and machines—from specialization and division of labor to the assembly line.

Industrialization changed the focus of making from the needs of individuals to the processes required to enable mass production and distribution. Efficiency increased dramatically and organizations grew significantly, initiating the displacement of the specialist in favor of the operationally superior enterprise. Mass production and distribution capabilities meant that industrial enterprises achieved a greater influence over individuals, resulting in a substantial increase in the standardization of usage. Over time, individuals saw their autonomy diminish as the enterprise achieved a position of control, dictating what was made and how it would be used. Dominant and encroaching for the past 100 years, this type of making turned us all into ‘consumers.’

We’ve lived quite a while with the industrialization of making and the autonomy of institution that control the making. It took the democratizing power of the Web and social technologies to initiate the fourth epoch, which is just beginning now. More on that in my next post.

The second epoch of making, Making For People, is a continuation from my previous post. I initially described this epoch as: division of labor, specialists emerge to focus on key skills, initiating the marketplace for trade.

To expand further, as communities, cultures, and societies became more advanced, the making process experienced a shift. This meant different behaviors and expectations from the makers. Specialists began making things for others, choosing to focus on a single discipline.

Societies developed technology and specialized knowledge in areas like farming, alchemy, construction, medicine, and science.
[Jalalabad Bazaar from Valodja on flickr] This necessitated certain skilled individuals to focus their efforts in one of these areas, resulting in higher quality of the things they made. Specialized skills also allowed for greater efficiency and consistency in the process of making, resulting in the early stages of product standardization. This shift allowed people to focus on the tasks they were best qualified to perform, while ensuring that other specialists supplied the remainder of goods and services everyone had to supply on their own. So, in the previous epoch (Making By People) every person essentially had to make their own hunting tools, medical care procedures, shelter, clothing, etc. In the second epoch, everyone specialized to provide goods and services to one another. This epoch largely occurs during the Agrarian Age (still Toffler's First Wave), spilling over into the early Industrial Age.

Naturally, this exposed a new level of collaboration, almost organic in way. It initiated the emergence of new interactions in the form of the marketplace, where specialists competed for the attention of individuals who might need their products. Monetary economic models also emerged as trade advanced and inherent markets developed to stabilize comparative values for various goods and services. Individual competition kept over-standardization at bay, forcing specialists to continuously consider the needs of individuals to remain relevant in the marketplace. This consideration was also reinforced because the context of use and the process of making still occurred in close proximity to the patron—the specialists lived in small communities where they shared the lifestyle of the individuals who used their product.

This closeness and empathy for the patron is lost in today's world (for now), the third epoch (which I'll talk about in another post).

I wasn't really paying attention to all this Jay Leno prime-time stuff until I stumbled across a blog post by Brian Stelter on the NYTimes.com website (a version of his post was published in the New York print edition of the Times). Brian's article essentially walks through NBC's reasoning for moving Leno into the 10pm time-slot.

The article outlines how the 10pm time-slot is dead because viewers are recording programs on their DVRs at 8pm and 9pm, then watching them at 10pm. Shows like "Fringe," "Heroes," and "Lost" are the programs referenced in the article that draw potential 10pm viewers to their TiVo (or equivalent).
[DVR Time from O Pish Posh on flickr] Ben Silverman, the co-chairman of NBC Entertainment is claiming that Leno at 10 is "totally DVR-proof" (according to Stelter's article). This article, and the claims of the NBC executives, really got me thinking about some issues that need to be addressed.

First, I don't have the data, but is the audience drawn to Jay Leno the same people watching "Fringe," "Heroes," and "Lost?" I'm thinking the viewers of these sci-fi dramas are more of the Letterman/O'Brien types. Additionally, is the audience that Leno draws in line with DVR usage? Granted, I'm not a TV expert, but the issues of audience alignment weren't addressed in the article. BusinessWeek did address it in this article.

Second, these dramas ("Fringe," "Heroes," and "Lost") are intense programs with intriguing and complex story lines. Naturally, this exaggerates the viewers disdain for disruptive advertisements, which is probably why everyone records the program to watch later (that's what I do).

This just feels like a helpless attempt at attacking a problem (DVR usage) with the wrong solution (prime-time Leno). I wish Leno success, this isn't an attack on him at all. This is, however, an attack on business as usual for marketing and advertising. Many people from these disciplines attend conferences and read articles about how traditional advertising doesn't work. Everyone nods their heads in agreement. But when it's time to go back to the office, all of the old behaviors kick in. Value is still determined by impressions (eyeballs); tactics and strategy still focus on disruption (TV ads, banner ads), and; education programs still teach these methods. The entire marketing and advertising ecosystem depends on antiquated and failing approaches to gaining and retaining customers.

Something seriously needs to change, but don't pile that on Leno's back.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Making By People is the first epoch of making. I described it as: an era with no means of production, every individual must make and procure everything they need to survive.

In this first epoch, during the early human cultures and before the emergence of specialization and the division of labor, things were made by the people who used them. The building of a hut, the crafting of a plow, the creation of clothing, all represent processes undertaken by an individual who personally possessed the needs or values that demanded the creation of a product.
[Two Ox Plowing from JimPatton on flickr] This time period aligned with the late part of the Hunter-Gatherer Age and spanned into the Agrarian Age, similar to Toffler's First Wave.

Individuals had to devise the appropriate design, gather the necessary materials, and then engage in the process of making the things that they needed. The maker decided how well their needs and values were addressed. The context of use determined what was made—on one’s property, in the field, in the home—typically by a single person or a small group.

We still see these behaviors among nomadic tribes that exist today. Collaboration is specific, contextual, and immediate as individuals develop the thing they need with little or no outside influence. So, the next time you take that coat hanger and bend it into a hook to hang your plant or make something bizarre our of duct tape, remember you ancestors.

I've been thinking about how the dialogue between institutions and constituents has changed quite a bit over time and how that relates to the concept of making. I think you can break the participants of making down into three categories (keep in mind that when I refer to things, products, or making, I'm referring to what is made--an artifact, service, system, environment, communication, etc., 'product' doesn't necessarily mean a physical object.):

The first type of participant, the individual, is a person who uses that which is made and in some cases is the maker of things (typically for themselves or close affiliates). The second participant, the specialist, is an artisan or craftsman with highly developed skills that yields products created on behalf of the individual. The third participant, the enterprise, is a formal or semi-formal group of people engaged in an organizational effort to make things.

These types of participants align with the shifts in ages of human history (hunter-gatherer to agrarian to industrial). But what's really interesting is how in today's information age, all three still apply. These shifts in the act of making fall into four distinct periods:

The 4 Epochs of Making

1. Making By People—No means of production, every individual must make and procure everything they need to survive.
    
   


2. Making For People—Division of labor, specialists emerge to focus on key skills, initiating the marketplace for trade.
    
   


3. Making Without People—Mechanized manufacturing and the assembly line place the mans of production into the hands of the enterprise, initiating the concept of "the consumer."
    
   


4. Making With People—Production is democratized, allowing any person to make (still in the early phase).
    
   

This leads me to the conclusion that what ever the next 'age' is (Collaboration? Social? Innovation?), it seems that this hierarchy of participants starts to reverse to the individual maker at the top, while still retaining all of the benefits and economies of scale that come from the enterprise model. When we get to a point where you can print 3D objects and circuit boards at home to make your own products, the dynamics and role of the enterprise will be radically different than the slight discomfort institutions feel today.