Douglas Rushkoff's Blog, page 40

Last Chance to Enroll in My Course

I'm teaching an online course over the next ten weeks based on the ideas in Program or Be Programmed, including readings by Kevin Kelly, Jaron Lanier, Sherry Turkle, Clay Shirky, Neil Postman, Tim O'Reilly, Howard Rheingold, and more.

You'll have the choice of reading whole books or brief excerpts, participating a little or a lot.

If you register anytime this coming week, you shouldn't miss anything. Check out http://www.maybelogic.org/courses.htm for details and registration.

A New Excerpt

Reality Sandwich just posted a new excerpt from Program or Be Programmed. It's a bit more utopian than most of what has gone up around the net so far, so I thought I'd share it.

In the long term, if we take up this challenge, we are looking at nothing less than the conscious, collective intervention of human beings in their own evolution. It's the opportunity of a civilization's lifetime. Shouldn't more of us want to participate actively in this project?

Digital technologies are different. They are not just objects, but systems embedded with purpose. They act with intention. If we don't know how they work, we won't even know what they want. The less involved and aware we are of the way our technologies are programmed and program themselves, the more narrow our choices will become; the less we will be able to envision alternatives to the pathways described by our programs; and the more our lives and experiences will be dictated by their biases.

On the other hand, the more humans become involved in their design, the more humanely inspired these tools will end up behaving. We are developing technologies and networks that have the potential to reshape our economy, our ecology, and our society more profoundly and intentionally than ever before in our collective history. As biologists now understand, our evolution as a species was not a product of random chance, but the forward momentum of matter and life seeking greater organization and awareness. This is not a moment to relinquish our participation in that development, but to step up and bring our own sense of purpose to the table. It is the moment we have been waiting for.

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Program or Be Programmed: The Video

Astra Taylor and Laura Hanna, the filmmakers behind Zizek! just put this short video together to help promote the ideas in Program or Be Programmed.

Join me on Daily Kos, Sunday Morning

Sunday morning at 9am Eastern I'll be participating in a discussion at DailyKos, courtesy of author and correspondent Mark Sumner. We will be talking about Program or Be Programmed, and the possibilities for a society that knows how to create its own future.

For those of you who haven't had any interactions with DailyKos other than watching its correspondents appear on MSNBC or NPR, I encourage you to come by and see how this place works. It's a genuinely self-regulating web community dedicated to progressive politics and culture.

(It should be easy to find once you go to dailykos.com – but post here if you can't find it for any reason, and I will provide more instructions.)

Me, on the Rutger's tragedy

Here's me talking on Minnesota Public Radio about how the biases of digital media were in part responsible for amplifying a mean prank into a seemingly suicide-worthy attack:

My main point is not that digital media killed the poor college kid, but that two of digital media's biases contributed to the situation. First, digital media is biased toward distribution. Every digital image is as good as distributed from its creation. Second, digital media is biased toward desensitization. We don't feel the human impact of what we do- even though they are so tremendously amplified.

As a result, we get unpredictable results. And this is why we really do need to learn and then teach the biases of these media.

Why Johnny Can't Program

A new piece by me, just up on Huffington Post:

Ask any kid what Facebook is for and he'll tell you it's there to help him make friends. What else could he think? It's how he *does* make friends. He has no idea the real purpose of the software, and the people coding it, is to monetize his relationships. He isn't even aware of those people, the program, or their purpose.

The kids I celebrated in my early books as "digital natives" capable of seeing through all efforts of big media and marketing have actually proven *less* capable of discerning the integrity of the sources they read and the intentions of the programs they use. If they don't know what the programs they are using are even for, they don't stand a chance to use them effectively. They are less likely to become power users than the used.

Amazingly, America – the birthplace of the Internet – is the only developed nation that does not teach programming in its public schools. Sure, some of our schools have elected to offer "computer" classes, but instead of teaching programming, these classes almost invariably teach programs: how to use Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, or any of the other commercial software packages used in the average workplace. We teach our kids how to get jobs in today's marketplace rather than how to innovate for tomorrow's.

Just last year, while researching a book on America's digital illiteracy, I met with the Air Force General then in charge of America's cybercommand. He said he had plenty of new recruits ready and able to operate drones or other virtual fighting machines – but no one capable of programming them, or even interested in learning how. He wasn't even getting recruits who were ready to begin basic programming classes. Meanwhile, he explained to me, colleges in Russia, China, and even Iran were churning out an order of magnitude more programmers than universities in the US. It is only a matter of time, he said – a generation at most – until our military loses its digital superiority.

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Secret 35% discount off my new book

The readers of BoingBoing just got a special from my publisher – 20% off the price of my new book. If you combine that with the 15% off people get for pre-ordering the book, it comes to a whopping 35% off. Ahh, the joys of independent publishing.

I figured rushkoff.com readers deserve the same break.

The e-book starts at a price of $10. 15% off makes it 8.50, and another 20% makes it $6.80. Likewise, the hard copy starts at $16. With the two discounts, it is $10.88.

They won't repeat these discounts; and they both run out shortly after the book is published Wednesday night.

So please go to http://orbooks/our-books/program to order this independently published book right now – to help me, my publisher, and the two charities to which I'm donating 10% of my proceeds: WikiMedia Foundation and Archive.org Just put the word BOING in the discount code box in the final ordering window.

I'll remove this post on Friday, so as not to discourage those who missed it.

One more talk, then a book launch

I'm giving my last pre-publication talk about Program or Be Programmed, at the Dumbo Arts Festival this weekend – Sunday, September 26th, St Ann's Warehouse, 38 Water Street in Dumbo, Brooklyn, 4pm followed by a great panel from the comics writers and artists of Act-i-vate.com, and then a party.

Next week, I begin guest blogging at boingboing.net and the new book will be released on Wednesday night. That's when the 15% pre-order discount goes away. The book is ONLY available through a

The Online Course: Program or Be Programmed

Although I'm not teaching any courses at NYU or The New School this year, I am teaching course available to everyone: Program or Be Programmed, at MaybeLogic Academy.

It will run from October 11 to December 19, online through lectures and in forums and chats. Enrollment includes a copy of the ebook of the upcomingProgram or Be Programmed. We'll also look at some other texts by Kevin Kelly, Jaron Lanier, Sherry Turkle, Clay Shirky, and Norbert Weiner. Required assignments will be as short as ...

Program or Be Programmed

It's ready, and I'm delighted to announce it here first: my first book on interactive media, Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age, is now heading to the printer and available for pre-order.

This is an indie book in every sense of the word. It can only be ordered directly from the publisher, OR Books which cuts out a whole lot of corporate middlemen while getting the book out a lot sooner and less expensively.

I'm also glad to be able offer anyone who pre-orders a 15...