THE RISE OF THE PROSUMER
Such groups are now forming regional, even transnational linkages. To the extent that professional psychologists, social workers, or doctors are involved at all, they increasingly undergo a role change, shifting from the role of impersonal expert who is assumed to know best to that of listener, teacher, ;md guide who works with the patient or client.Existing voluntary or nonprofit groups—originally organized for the purpose of helping others—are similarly struggling to see how they fit in with a movement based on the principle of helping oneself.
The self-help movement is thus restructuring the socio-sphere. Smokers, stutterers, suicide-prone people, gamblers, victims of throat disease, parents of twins, overeaters, and other such groupings now form a dense network of organizations that mesh with the emerging Third Wave family and corporate structures.
But whatever their significance for social organization, they represent a basic shift from passive consumer to active pro-sumer, and they thus hold economic meaning as well. Though ultimately dependent on the market and still intertwined with it, they are transferring activity from Sector B of the economy to Sector A, from the exchange sector to the pro-sumption sector. Nor is this burgeoning movement the only such force: Some of the richest and largest corporations in the world are also—for their own technological and economic reasons—accelerating the rise of the prosumer.
THE DO-IT-YOURSELFERS
In 1956 the American Telephone & Telegraph Company, creaking under the burden of exploding communications demand, began introducing new electronic technology that made it possible for callers to direct-dial their long-distance calls. Today it is even possible to direct-dial many overseas calls. By punching in the appropriate numbers, the consumer took on a task previously done for him by the operator.
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