Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding: The Origins of a New System?

In this second chapter platforms are situated in their historical context outlining the origins of crowdsourcing and its offshoot crowdfunding. Author Vincent Rouzé shows that, far from being new, these phenomena have their roots in far older practices brought up to date with the use of digital technologies. Fundraising, iquib and tontines are all examples of the existence of such older practices operating without digital technology. He traces the ideological foundations of the participation and collaboration underlying these platforms, showing that debates about the ideas of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding typically operate with a ‘managerial’ conception of participation. Not the carriers of a revolution as typically claimed, the chapter illustrates how such intermediaries are rather an ‘old story reinvented’ as well as outlining an older genealogy of crowdfunding before the internet including such examples as subscription journals and the film Shadows (1959). It concludes by assessing if the logic of gift-counter-gift in earlier collaborative funding is apparent in today’s platforms and finally considering the role class and terms like the ‘crowd’ in rendering real social stratification invisible on such platforms.