As we get closer to the release date for my upcoming book [weblink:475], I'm now starting to deal with the tail end of the production process - finalising the cover image and organising the back cover text. Having featured comments from John Hartley and Geert Lovink on the back cover of my last monograph, I aimed high with this one as well, and I'm very pleased that both MIT's Henry Jenkins, one of the most eminent scholars in the field of user-led participatory culture, and Michel Bauwens, the driving force behind the inspiring Foundation for P2P Alternatives, have agreed to endorse the new book. And what endorsements they are - I'm very flattered, and I hope the book lives up to these plaudits.
Axel Bruns's far-reaching and conceptually powerful book, From Production to Produsage, captures a shift in cultural logic which is profoundly altering how culture gets produced, how knowledge gets circulated, how reputations get made, and how industry, politics, and education operate. This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to know more about Wikipedia, Second Life, eBay, Flickr, Moveon, or YouTube, in short, for anyone who wants to understand the turn towards participatory culture.
-- Henry Jenkins, author of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide
This is quite simply the book about peer production that we've been waiting for and I have no doubt that it will be considered a classic in the line of Toffler's Future Shock. It is a very well written description and analysis of the most important social change process of our time. Bruns's book represents the coming into awareness of a new social force, that of the communities of produsers directly making what they need, while at the same time inventing new forms of governance and ownership. This is not just a book 'about produsage' from an outsider looking in, but itself a stellar production of the new form of consciousness, written from the inside out, both subjective and objective. The new world is already there, and Bruns will let you see it.
-- Michel Bauwens, founder of the Foundation for P2P Alternatives
The book is due for release in February 2008, but you can already read Chapter 1: Introduction, and see the chapter outline for more details.
