Douglas Rushkoff's Blog, page 22
June 9, 2016
June 8, 2016
Radio New Zealand – How to Fix the Digital Economy
Listen to the audio podcast at Radio New Zealand
Media theorist, professor, and graphic novelist Douglas Rushkoff has been in love with the internet since its cyberpunk beginnings. He has made several documentaries and written more than a dozen bestselling books about media, technology, and culture – his new book is Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity.
Rushkoff is Professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics at CUNY/Queens in New York and In 2013 was named by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as the sixth most influential thinker in the world.
He will speak at the Open Source Open Society conference in New Zealand in August.
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Digital Trends – WHY ISN’T THE DIGITAL ECONOMY MAKING LIFE BETTER?
Read this piece at Digital Trends
When City University of New York professor (and Digital Trends contributor) Douglas Rushkoff skimmed the Wall Street Journal a few years ago, he couldn’t help but mutter two words upon seeing Twitter CEO Evan Williams’ $4.3 billion company earnings: he’s screwed. Except he used more colorful words.
Why the disdain for a company that just went public and now annually brings in around $2 billion?
Because now it can never stop growing, Rushkoff explained during his keynote speech at this year’s WebVisions conference in Portland, Oregon. While Twitter may generate around $2 billion each year, Wall Street considers the app a failure if that number doesn’t go up year after year after year. As CEO, Williams needs to continue to grow a service – sending 140-character messages – that has likely reached its peak. As he put it, Wall Street always wants more; “there’s no such thing as enough, you can’t stop.”
That problem, and others that spiral out from it, are the topic of Rushkoff’s latest book, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus.
To Rushkoff, the constant corporate requirement to grow is not just hurting the digital economy, but destroying the planet itself. Sure, digital technology allows for transparency, but it also tends to accelerate and amplify the shortcomings of corporations. Today, companies aren’t necessarily created in order to generate revenue but rather, to get snapped up by bigger companies.
Furthermore, startups aren’t optimized to create sustainable marketplaces or even to do business. Instead, they’ve been optimized for value extraction while consistently externalizing as much development (i.e. human cost) as possible. So how do entrepreneurs break this vicious cycle?
“It’s a better business strategy,” Rushkoff told Digital Trends. “The whole trick is trying to help young developers understand how to make money for themselves; how to do business. It’s not about being generous or leftist. It’s about doing better business, having more long-term proceeds and revenues, [and] really old fashioned things like making money by selling goods and services.”
Perhaps it really is that easy. Rushkoff acknowledges that there certainly isn’t a lack of good ideas, the problem is entrepreneurs losing sight of them. Once money-grubbing investors enter the fray, dangle billions of dollars in front of them, then snatch up the brand to fulfill their own motives, sustainable profitability goes out the window.
“The share price comes to matter more than the company or product or software,” Rushkoff says. “Share price and actual business prosperity have become disconnected. If developers resisted the temptation to sell their business to venture capital (or even just resisted the wrong VC) then they would be free to develop their business to be profitable. It’s a much higher probability win than becoming a multi-billion-dollar company, too.”
Rather than enrich consumers to keep them coming back, many modern companies are positioned to kill competition and create monopolies. Take a company like Uber, for instance. According to Rushkoff, Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick didn’t start the popular ride-share company to answer the question of, “How can we create a sustainable taxi future?” Instead, Uber exists to create such a monopoly in ride sharing that allows it to leverage that position into a separate vertical. Unfortunately, this doesn’t make riders rich at all; it hardly even makes its drivers rich.
To truly achieve profitability when it comes to a company like Uber, Rushkoff says a worker-owned platform is the best method. But could a worker-owned ride share program actually prove competitive against a behemoth like Uber?
“There are a few in the running right now, from Juno in New York to Lazooz, based in New Zealand,” Rushkoff said. “We’ll have to see if they can compete [but] Uber’s war chest makes it easy for them to undercut the prices of anyone else. Uber doesn’t have to make money; it simply has to kill competition, the way Walmart does. It’s going to be interesting to see if drivers are able to forge some solidarity, and move en masse to better services.”
Though a company like Uber dates this problem with the digital economy as something that’s only recently occurred, Rushkoff recalls two instances prior to 2001 which served as a sort of “aha moment.” The first dates all the way back to 1995; Netscape goes public on the very same day Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia died. To him, “it felt like the original San Francisco ethos of the ‘net died that day.”
The second happened several years later in 2000, when AOL bought Time Warner. In an op-ed he wrote for the New York Times, Rushkoff reasoned that AOL had reached a peak, that it was at a point where it was cashing in “inflated chips” before collapsing. He perceived the dotcom boom nearing its bust, too. Except the New York Times wouldn’t publish the story.
“No one believed me, and they wouldn’t publish the piece,” Rushkoff explained. “That was even scarier to me. And, of course, two months later the internet stocks all crashed. I could see how the digital economy was actually working, with companies looking at their shares as their real products, and pivoting all over the place to extract value from the real world, and stuff it into their share price.”
Recognizing the problem is one thing; employing a solution is something else entirely. Mitigating extraction, steering clear from the monopoly mindset, and optimizing platforms for the velocity of exchange are all perfectly viable places to start, according to Rushkoff. Businesses must understand that their users aren’t merely consumers but producers and value creators.
Although society is currently entrenched in the Digital Age, it doesn’t mean it should stray from actually making something and creating value for it. To achieve a sustainable digital economy that cares more about making its users rich than capital gains, the externalization of development must cease. Services like eBay, Vimeo, Slack, Kickstarter, or Dropbox are all perfect examples of companies uninterested in monopolies and focused on connecting people and creating value.
“If you make your users rich, they will like your service and come back to it,” Rushkoff told the captivated WebVisions audience. “This is how you create a business that will actually function in the traditional sense and make money.”
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June 6, 2016
Follow the Money Radio – Interview with Douglas Rushkoff
Listen to this audio podcast at Follow the Money Daily
In this week’s broadcast, Christian economist Jerry Robinson discusses the limits of economic growth with popular media theorist and author, Professor Douglas Rushkoff. We also discuss his latest book, Throwing Rocks at Google: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity.
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June 5, 2016
Slate – Douglas Rushkoff’s Advice for the Next President
“There’s a general belief amongst the political class that a growing economy is good for everybody,” media theorist Douglas Rushkoff says in the video above, speaking about issues that the next president must prioritize. “What they need to understand is that the way corporations grow is by extracting value from people and places and storing it up in share price.”
In the latest installment in a weekly series from Slate, 92Y, and New America, we hear from Rushkoff—a media theorist, critic, and author—as he offers his advice for the next U.S. president. Each Monday this election season, we’ll publish a short video in which a policy maker, writer, or thinker gives the next commander in chief their best ideas for how to handle the highest office in the land.
Above, Rushkoff elaborates on those misconceptions about today’s economy, and what should be done about it, as well as what job he thinks the president should do for a day in order to understand the country better.
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June 2, 2016
Jessica Ann Media – Douglas Rushkoff on the Future of Humanity
Listen to the audio podcast at Jessica Ann Media
Welcome back to The Art of Humanity, where we explore creativity + consciousness to allow you and your business to evolve. In Episode 17, Jessica Ann talks with one of the world’s greatest thinkers: media theorist and futurist Douglas Rushkoff. We touch on his background, religion, technology, politics, social media, community and more.
In this interview, Jessica Ann and Douglas Rushkoff discuss:
1. How his background in theater influences him today. ..and why Rushkoff believes that theater is “metaphysically potent.” When the 4th wall of film/media – and the shift from a “receive only” kind of doing media to an interactive, peer-to-peer way of doing media flipped his whole world. He started to look at everything in the world as up for discussion. Everything from his Judaism, money, work, government…he became interested in bringing an “open-source hacker ability” to all of these systems that were seen as closed. There are economic causes to this rather than technological ones. The big problem he’s working on today.
2. Why our economic operating system become universally accepted as a game…and what we can do about it.
3. His idea process. Here’s one of the quotes from his answer:
“People who think and question are dangerous to the status quo…but right now the status quo is dangerous to humanity.” -Douglas Rushkoff
4. Why he’s pleading that we optimize our machines to serve humanity rather than serve a very limiting understanding of how markets work.
5. The importance of using the Internet to reduce our slavery footprint.
7. Why we need to maintain balance when it comes to allowing technology to replace our local reality. We need to be conscious with other people and look into people’s eyes. The more alienated from these evolved social cues that we have as animals, the less solidarity that we have – the less able we are to think like humans and the more conditioned we are to think in the ways that our machines train us to.
8. Why we need to take advantage of opportunities and connect with other people as much as possible so that our bodies don’t evolve to depend on technology for our well-being.
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May 31, 2016
The Village Voice – Is New York City Home to a Technopolis? Or a Tech Bubble?
Read the complete article at The Village Voice
“New York is “pre-gentrified,” says Douglas Rushkoff, a media theorist and author of Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus. He says the growing number of deep-pocketed tech workers in the city contrasts with their emergence in San Francisco.
“The untethering of rents from ordinary wages in NYC began under Bloomberg. The tech bubble just accelerates the trend. Apartments had already shifted from residences to an asset class. Once real residents were in competition with real estate speculators and investors parking capital, there was no hope of maintaining a livable city.”
The good news, says Rushkoff, is that this era will pass.
“Most of these companies’ profits are based in advertising or big data, and we know those industries are unsustainable. But these buildings will be reused for other purposes someday, just as Google uses the factory floors of the Chelsea Piers for YouTube today.”
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May 27, 2016
Handelsblatt – The Silicon Valley Skeptic
Read this piece at Handelsblatt Global Edition
The prize-winning American media theorist, in an interview with Handelsblatt, questions the basic assumptions of the Silicon Valley-driven digital economy, which he warns is more concerned about concentrating wealth than improving the world for humanity.
What is the reason you chose this provocative title for you book? Do you want people to throw rocks at Google?
No, I wanted people to know that someone identifies with their frustration. Obviously I’m not telling people to throw rocks at the Google bus, but people are throwing rocks at Google buses. For me Silicon Valley has appropriated the ethos of San Francisco as a brand value for companies that don’t really do that. Silicon Valley’s rapid growth seems to be displacing instead of enriching people’s lives. They lose their jobs. They can’t afford a living and have to move away.
Google started as a small company with the slogan “Do no evil.” How did it become a company that some people in San Francisco hate so much?
There is something wrong about the way Google is impacting the world, but neither its buses nor the people in them are the core problem. Sergey Brin and Larry Page (the Google founders) didn’t recognize that they were running their company on an operating system that’s all about growth. Since they did the IPO, there’s this pressure to grow, faster and faster.
What’s wrong about growth?
We created an operating system that’s not helping anyone anymore. It’s grow or die! See what is happening to Twitter right now! Why isn’t it enough to have a company with $2 billion in revenue? Why does it have to be more?
Wasn’t it also a problem that Twitter didn’t think about a business model from early on?
Right, they had enough money, so they didn’t need to do the IPO. It’s not that Twitter isn’t successful, it’s just not successful enough to justify all the money investors have pumped in.
You seem angry.
Yes, Twitter always felt like a company that was more (about) creating; it didn’t ask for too much of me like mining the data for example or creating a filter bubble like Amazon.
iTunes sells the music, Netflix sells the movies and Amazon sells the books and almost everything else. Everyone passes through the same digital turnstiles, sees the same lists and recommendations, and is subjected to the same algorithms.
But can’t you just argue that Amazon takes money from one market to create a new market? Like with all the investments in rockets with Blue Origin (a rocket-building company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos) for example? And what about Tesla?
Yes, Elon Musk (the Tesla founder) created a new market with electronic cars. But when I look at Amazon I just see this large colonial style and how they destroyed a whole book business.
Don’t you just say that because you are from the book industry?
Well, but I also look at the way they employ people. It reminds me of Uber’s vision to replace humans through robots over the long term.
What’s your opinion on the sharing economy in general?
Uber or Lyft (another ride-sharing app) are not about sharing space in a car. These apps make their money by encouraging people to engage in freelance versions of previously regulated industries. A taxi medallion, required by law, can cost several hundred thousand dollars. So can a hotel license. The investors behind it can extract the lion’s share of the revenue.
Many regulations pertaining to the hotel and transport businesses are old. Don’t we need reforms to drive innovation?
Many founders are libertarians. “Let the market rule!” They believe that any kind of regulation, of property or zoning, is an impediment to nature. I would say that no, we have government and these things were created not just out of corruption. These costs and regulations are not implemented out of spite, but in order to maintain fair pricing and a minimum quality of service. Human skill is undervalued. At some point soon, the software won’t need the human being any more.
But when you talk to anybody in the industry who works on robots and artificial intelligence, they would say when robots replace humans, humans could become more creative. Are they just telling us that to make us feel better?
It’s probably mostly a lie. Let’s say theoretically we see automation replacing jobs, for example with Amazon’s large warehouses, so the sales person is gone or you have the algorithm, so the stock broker is gone.
Google showed in their study on autonomous vehicles that robots might be better drivers. Do you think we will still be allowed to drive in the future? What will happen to German “Fahrvergnügen”?
Yes, I think so, or there will be special “human roads” for people. One for the humans, three for the robots.
What’s so wrong about that robots will drive our cars?
I’m OK with going into a world where robots do all the work. But then we have to value the human being for something else, but we don’t … beyond our utility value.
This is a major argument of many Silicon Valley investors, for example of Peter Thiel, a partner in the venture capital firm Founders Fund.
It’s a kind of a fascism. Everything has to go away, the old history, tradition. It’s just “disrupt, disrupt, disrupt.” They would always argue it’s better because it wins. This is Donald Trump’s argument: “I’m winning and therefore I’m winning.” I don’t think that everything can be solved by technology. It negates the human reality.
In your book, you are also talking about Ray Kurzweil (an American futurist who plans to be frozen after death with liquid nitrogen in the hopes of being revived later) and his vision of singularity when we all connect ourselves with a computer and could live forever.
Ray Kurzweil is a dangerous cat.
What’s wrong with living forever?
I don’t like that these guys talk about human ability as a defect as if they had to be replaced by robots. The aim of mankind should be team human — to discover and to expand what it means to be human.
Are we not doing that?
No, we are building AI (artificial intelligence) for corporations whose plan it is to get rid of humans. Is that a happy story?
No.
It’s a really scary story. This why Stephen Hawking (the Nobel Prize-winning physicist) is saying: This is the big threat.
Google does one of the largest marketing campains for AI in computer history to show that AI is not a threat but the next big thing.
Maybe it is. Maybe humans will be the last big thing.
Don’t you exaggerate a little bit? Isn’t this cynical?
No. I’m not cynical, I’m an Internet fan. I don’t think it’s apocalyptic to say let’s think twice before we program AI. I think we have to program technology conciously and to promote the human agenda, not that corporate nonsense. It’s just not making anybody happy.
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