Abstract

ISLAS-CARMONA, Jose Octavio. The Prosumer: The Communicative Agent of the Ubiquitous Society. Palabra Clave [online]. 2008, vol.11, n.1, pp.29-39. ISSN 0122-8285.

In the imaginary of the ubiquitous society, where digital communications exert a categorical influence on the development and evolution of new communication environments, the transmitter and the receiver, as well as the models once used to explain the communication process, now exhibit obvious limitations in their capacity to explain. The real world and existing circumstances have gone beyond them. In the history of the development of the mass media, one can see a resistance to certain "remediations". From the standpoint of media ecology, the Internet - the intelligent medium of communication - can be understood as a logical extension of the telegraph, which was the first exteriorization of our nervous system. The development of mobile digital communications has moved us into a new media environment: the ubiquitous society. According to Neil Postman, there is an underlying philosophy behind all technology, and the communicative principles of the ubiquitous society: communication for all, at any time and place, involve the need to produce mobile digital communication devices to satisfy the demands of the communication environment inherent in the ubiquitous society. The development of Web 2 can be regarded as a genuine parting of the waters in the history of the evolution of the Internet. It introduced important changes in both the behavior and the cultural consumption habits of cybernauts. The cybernaut is a prosumer, and prosumers must be recognized as the communication agents of the ubiquitous society. They will play a decisive role in subsequent remediations of the Internet, a medium that definitely can be understood as a logical extension of human intelligence.

Keywords : Internet; media; impact of communication; technological change; communication process.

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