For Pro-Ams, leisure is not passive consumerism but
active and participatory; it involves the deployment
of publicly accredited knowledge and skills, often
built up over a long career, which has involved sacri-
fices and frustrations. Pro-Ams demand we rethink
many of the categories through which we divide up
our lives. Pro-Ams are a new social hybrid. Their
activities are not adequately captured by the tradi-
tional definitions of work and leisure, professional
and amateur, consumption and production. (Lead-
beater & Miller 2004: 20)According to Leadbeater and Miller the Pro-Am
form of productive consumption is another type of
distributed, bottom-up and self-organising body of
knowledge, which disrupts the modernist view of so-
cial organisation. In their examples, it is something
we have seen lately emerge in many fields, and always
with a highly professional output, with examples of
astronomy, surfing, software development, educa-
tion, music production and distribution. According
to Leadbeater and Miller this type of amateur is
something other than that we have previously seen in
the world of hobbies. “The Pro-Ams are knowledge-
able, educated, committed and networked, by new
technology.” (12)
What happens between these roles is that new inter-
faces for collaboration arise and which through ex-
change further the knowledge production and prac-
tices of all the partners involved. One example
brought up by Leadbeater and Miller is how the col-
laboration between NASA and amateur astronomers
has evolved into a full-scale cooperation that brings
together hobbyists with highly complex science. The
improved technology and the sheer numbers of par-
ticipants has empowered amateurs to organize
round-the-clock or long-term research projects that
complement the work of the professional astrono-
mers, at for example NASA.
Astronomy is fast becoming a science driven by a vast
open source Pro-Am movement working alongside a
much smaller body of professional astronomers and
astrophysicists. (Leadbeater & Miller 2004: 14)Amateurs working with professional astronomy or-
ganizations occur on many levels and in the last dec-
ades this community has been the front-runner in
citizen science projects. One of the simplest exam-
ples is the SETI@home project, a distributed com-
puting project hosted at the Space Sciences Labora-
tory at the University of California, Berkeley. SETI
- the “Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence” is a
project that scans noise from space searching for
patterns that could be a transmission from civiliza-
tion on other planet. Since nobody knows what to
look for, this requires a very large processing capaci-
ty, and through the SETI@home software you can
make a contribution to this research by simply using
your own computer at home. By installing the free
software, similar to a screensaver, the computer will
receive data packages from SETI that the computer
will process when the computer is idle and the
screensaver is switched on. With several million con-
tributors connected worldwide, this open grid is one
of the fastest computers in the world and many ama-
teurs collect old computer part and mount make
their own “SETI farms” at home to contribute to the
shared computing capacity. Recently this approach
has also been applied to scientific research in fields
such as biology, medicine, physics and the mapping
of global climate change through a project called
Gridrepublic. By just installing the software your
computer will help research, but unfortunately you
will not be able to participate yourself.
However, there are many other examples of citizen
science, from amateur ornithologists mapping bird
migrations in the fields (eBird) to others where any-
one can help to organise and tag photographs of ce-
lestial observations for NASA (Clickworkers). The
later example consists of simple tasks that does not
demand much skill from the participant and does
not add much to his expertise, although he can from
the comfort of his home be part of a real space ad-
venture.
NASA also has a deliberate policy of collaborating
with the watchers of the night sky. Even though NASA
has the most powerful astronomical equipment on
the planet they still need the widespread eyes of thou-
sands of amateurs to get the most accurate data.
Through Internet forums and shared databases net-
worked amateurs report spotted phenomena and
their timing which coordinates a global net of eyes.
This recent development would not have been pos-
sible without three crucial interface innovations,
bringing the stars down to a shared platform for par-
ticipants to use; the Dobson telescope, the cheap
CCD photo chip and the Internet. Especially the first
innovation can be described in more detail as it bears
much resemblance to that we have seen throughout
this thesis.