Douglas Rushkoff's Blog, page 42

The Scotsman gives Life, Inc. Four Stars!

I haven't gotten stars, before. It is nice.

LIFE INC:
BY DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF
(Vintage, £9.99) ★★★★
ONE recent Christmas Eve, Douglas Rushkoff was mugged in his Brooklyn neighbourhood. It was an up-and-coming area. So he did something public-spirited – he logged on to his local website and posted a note warning other residents of the threat. You'd think they'd be pleased. They weren't. They were angry. They thought it might adversely affect property prices. Money, Rushkoff realised, is distorting...

First they came for the musicians….

I wrote a little summary of talk I gave a while back for Mediabistro conference on ebooks. The talk was more about how professional publishing has to accept that 80% of them are now unnecessary, and that only the most passionate and qualified need remain.

This version ended up a little more about the perils of believing that everything journalistic can be handled effectively by well-meaning amateurs.

It's for something called Neiman Reports:

First they came for the musicians, and I did not...

Too Big to Fail? The BP Bailout as Corporatism

Nowhere have I seen a clearer example of the perils of corporatism playing out than in the current handling of the BP oil spill. If only Obama understood the context of the decisions he's about to make, he might be able to use this as an opportunity to turn all this around, and put people and the planet before profits. (Will someone please tell him to read my book Life Inc?)

Like so many presidents before him, Obama is being given an opportunity to choose between corporatism and commerce...

Taking back the world: one mall at a time

via Arthur, posted at Spectre:

http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2010/05/27/mall-farming/

The failure and abandonment of shopping malls throughout the country has a bright side: smart communities and businesses are turning them into greenhouses for organic agriculture. Talk about a nice urban hack. (Hack, as in its original sense of retooling something for a better purpose.)

If this is the way the post-apocalypse looks, count me in.

The Galleria Mall in Cleveland, Ohio is leading the way by...

Life Inc: The Paperback

[image error]Here's the cover for the paperback of Life Inc. Don't get too excited, it's not slated for release until January, so we'll all have to make do with hard covers until then.

The book is in its sixth printing, which means there's a nice, constant stream of interest in the ideas. I am planning some extremely strange media for when this edition comes out, so stay tuned for that. As for the title, we went with the original and a new subtitle. So the winners of the title contest and free books are ...

Many Thoughts

Sorry I haven't been posting very much. Many things going on in my life and professionally that are keeping me on the road and offline.

My backlogged thoughts in no particular order:

I am writing Program or Be Programmed as a book. I will be done soon. Weeks, not months. Recent events in the Facebook and Apple universes have convinced me more than ever that programming is our era's equivalent of literacy. Whether corporations are controlling the direction of technology, or whether technology...

Fantastic Panel at Paley

Watch live streaming video from http://pbsdigitalnation.org for the past couple of months. Some of the participants of last month's roundtable came to NYC last night for a live discussion. It's one of the best panels I've been a part of, thanks to the participants...

Program or Be Programmed

Here's another way of saying the basic premise of my book Life Inc.

(And yes, they spelled Douglas wrong.)

Make sure you are not a computer

Grammar says everything. The online signup process for Nimbuzz, one of the wifi telephone services, asks users:

"To make sure you are not a computer, please type in the characters you see in the text box below:"

In other words, you can find out if you are human or computer by taking their simple test. Imagine if such a test were available to the androids in BladeRunner.

At least we all now have a place to turn if we are afraid we might be computers.

The Crowd – a new roundtable at PBS Digital Nation

I'm moderating a conversation between the smartest people I know thinking about open source, crowd-sourcing, the hive, and digital mob behavior over at http://pbsdigitalnation.org It has already evolved into a mind-expanding, passionate, no-holds-barred conversation.

You are all invited to participate along with:

Danah Boyd – Social Media Researcher, Microsoft Research; Fellow, Berkman Center of Internet and Society, co-author, Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out. danah.org

Amy...