BLURRING THE AMATEUR/PROFESSIONAL DISTINCTION
Steve Portigal, a smart observer of consumer behavior, posts a link-filled examination of the many ways in which amateurs and professionals are converging. A few samples:
Within recent memory, some products that put previously unachievable professional-grade abilities in the hands of ordinary people include video cameras, desktop publishing, teeth whitening, home theater, hairstyling products, and home dry-cleaning. Further, consider some of the brands that offer "professional" as part of their promise: Hummer, Jeep, Viking, Thermador, SubZero, Bosch, Nikon, and Smart and Final.
In our culture there is a growing interest in trying to be like the professionals. As consumers, we're interested in how business is done. The popular press reports the amount of money that a new movie makes in its opening weekend. Advertisements (most recently Dell) profile the product designers, user researchers, usability testers, and others who are behind the scenes for the products we buy. Many of the ubiquitous reality-TV shows are simply pulling back the veil on a previously hidden process (MTV's Cribs documents the homes of the famous, Take This Jobï¿ tracks the work activities of people with unique occupations, Airline shows the minutiae of getting passengers boarded for an on-time departure, and Family Plots tells all about a family-owned funeral home). The boundaries between consumer and producer continue to blur, a change that was massively accelerated by the Internet....
But beyond simply acting upon that sense of ownership by talking about the companies, many people are taking advantage of new enabling technology (i.e., Photoshop) to go one step further - to create new "products." And, with a distribution channel like the Internet, they can also share their creation with an enormous audience, just like the professionals.
There's too much here for a quote to do justice to it. Read the whole thing. On a related note, way back in 1996, Reason's Nick Gillespie looked at the creative ways fans relate to popular culture--a far cry from the stereotype of passive consumers.