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Chapter 2: Cybertarian Flexibility—When Prosumers Join the Cognitariat, All That Is Scholarship Melts into Air

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    The prevailing media credo, in domains that matter both a lot (popular, capitalist, and state discourse and action) and a little (communication, cultural, and media studies), is upheaval. The litany goes something like this: Corporate power is challenged. State authority is compromised. Avant-garde art and politics are centered. The young are masters, not victims. Technologies represent freedom, not domination. Revolutions are fomented by Twitter, not theory; by memes, not memos; by Facebook, not Foucault; by phone, not protest.

    • 2.1: Introduction
      The technophilic vision of old and middle-aged media being replaced by new media, as espoused by corporations, governments, and civil society. The role in this vision of Alvin Toffler's concept of the prosumer, or the simultaneous cultural consumer and producer, and the individualist fantasy.
    • 2.2: Television and the Environment
      Investigating popular claims related to the downfall of television and the green qualities of new media technologies.
    • 2.3: Cogenitariat
      Introduction to Toffler's concept of the "cogenitariat": well-educated workers who take part in casualized cultural work. The contrast between Toffler's original conception of the cogenitariat as less vulnerable to economic exploitation than the proletariat, and the employment instability and income insecurity faced by the actual modern cogenitariat.
    • 2.4: Conclusion
      Breaking free of the flawed cybertarian mythology and praise for the cognitariat.
    • 2.5: Notes

    This page titled Chapter 2: Cybertarian Flexibility—When Prosumers Join the Cognitariat, All That Is Scholarship Melts into Air is shared under a CC BY 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Toby Miller (University of California Press) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.

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