Douglas Rushkoff's Blog, page 43

The Book Business

Here's a "trailer" for the video version of a talk I did for MediaBistro about the future of book publishing in an electronic era. I will try to find the whole thing, or some way for rushkoff.com people to see the entirety, as it was a free talk and free might as well be free.

PBS Roundtable in Full Swing

I'm leading a series of monthly roundtables at http://pbsdigitalnation.org . They will be in the style of Steven Johnson's original Feed magazine – or as close to that as we can get for the time being – where visitors can develop threaded conversations around the original posts.

The first topic is the PBS Frontline's Digital Nation documentary, and – perhaps predictably – not everyone in the show likes the way it came out. This is how one from Henry Jenkins begins:

I frankly found the...

Crowd-jamming a New Book Title for Life Inc.

So RandomHouse has agreed to do a paperback version of Life Inc: How the world became a corporation and how to take it back.

I'm going to add an extensive "resources" section to the end, with contributions from people and organizations who are succeeding at that challenge.

But they also want to retitle the book. Maybe to something more specific, or at least more evocative. Most people think the book was called "Life" as it is.

So, I am opening this quest up for collaborative frenzy. Help?

The...

Digital Nation Roundtable now LIVE

I'm hosting a new place for discussions about our digital future, the Digital Nation Roundtable, on the PBS Frontline site.

I don't have the direct link yet, so scroll down that page a screen until you see it. And the join in!

Digital Nation – my new documentary – Tuesday 2/2 on PBS

Digital Nation – a PBS Frontline documentary I've been working on for, gosh, two years now – is finally airing this coming Tuesday evening, Feb 2, at 9pm on pretty much all PBS stations in US. (I know: that's during the Lost premiere that even Obama feared going up against. But you can Tivo Lost, watch us live, and watch Lost after without the commercials.) For those of you outside the viewing area or without TV's, you can watch the whole thing anytime from broadcast onwards by going to

Corporations as Uber-Citizens

Yesterday's Supreme Court ruling was positive in one respect: it made law out of what was already happening. While corporations earned "personhood" back in the 1860's when a court clerk (likely bribed) added this language into the margins of another court decision, they never quite had the rights of citizenship before. They already write our laws (through lobbies) elect our leaders (with money) and create public opinion (with money and PR). If you're interested in how and why that happened...

ETSY talk

I'm honored to be speaking at Etsy in Dumbo, Brooklyn, this month about the creation of value and how to exchange it directly with others.

The people at Etsy are my heroes, so this should be particularly fun. The talk is free but you're supposed to rsvp. You can also watch it live online, but you still have to register for that. From the Etsy site:

Come on down on January 21, 2010, at 7 p.m ET at Etsy, 55 Washington Street, Suite 512, Brooklyn, NY 11201. This is a free event open to the...

Miami Herald names Life Inc 'best of 2010′

Miami Herald book reviewer Richard Pachter takes "a look back at the best business books of 2009″ and does me a great honor while providing a terrific summary of my intentions:

Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back. Douglas Rushkoff. Random House. 304 pages. 6/15/09

The "operating system" behind the world's economies and monetary systems is flawed and antithetical to productivity and most other human values. Greed, avarice and (unenlightened) self-interest...

It's Up to Us

I posted this about a year ago – the night of Obama's election. A few people have mentioned it to me in the past week, so I thought I'd repost it now.

Though I share in the jubilation at Obama's election, I find I'm also a bit guarded. Holding back, as if afraid to get "fooled again" by the promise of new leadership.

To be sure, it's going to feel good and be good for America to have a potential world leader as our president – someone who, instead of bringing himself down to the level of the l...

What's Inside What?

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Nice, short, new interview with me at H+ magazine, about my new graphic novel series, eXoriare, and what it's like to write story for a video game.

I read all of these books… Pause and Effect or First Person or what's-his-name's awful books on character and storytelling for games… or Marie Ryan, Narrative as Virtual Reality, or Hamlet on the Holodeck. All of these. And the more I read about it, the less I felt that there was a there there. This holy grail about somehow merging gameplay with...