INTRODUCTION: OPEN SOURCE CULTURE AND AESTHETICS

For now, however, we take it for granted that constitutive features of the production model incubated in free and open source software programming have spread dramatically in three general directions: (1) a multiplication in what vectors can be tafyen to occupy the role of "source" beyond the realm of computer programming, with genetic "code" being perhaps the most notable and literal substitution, but one followed by "open content" systems for knowledge production and reference such as Wifypedia, and various other endeavors encouraging the creation of alternative and nonproprietary licensing arrangements for phenomena typically recognized as intellectual property, from chemical compositions to artistic works,4 (2) an even larger field of processes that leverage the distribution and organization of voluntary (unremunerated) labor found in crowdsourcing (the outsourcing of portions of a larger task to an indefinite group of volunteers); prosumption (a consumer's participation in the production of the good or service being consumed), including the increasing prevalence of beta and usability testing on everything from software to chairs; citizen journalism (the contribution of nonprofessionals to the coverage, documentation, and public discussion of news events); and participatory and social media of all types; and, finally,5 (3) the aggregation of "passively" contributed demographic data, geographic positions, and consumer dispositions to generate "just in time" advertising and messaging strategies; here we find the primary source for the mass expansion of niche and proximal marketing that has driven the "cocrafting" of both products and politicians over the last two decades.6 Taken together, these phenomena constitute a significant reordering of economic and communication networks, as well as systems of social power more generally.