Douglas Rushkoff's Blog, page 44

Radical Abundance

How We Get Past "Free" and Learn to Exchange Value Again.

Here's my keynote from the O'Reilly Web 2.0 conference last week. It is my clearest articulation yet of how we're using an obsolete operating system for money, optimized for a pre-Internet economy. This is a lot of what I wanted to talk about at the New School's "Internet as Playground and Factory" last week.

Murdoch to Google: Search THIS

As unlikely as it sounds, Rupert Murdoch may end up being our last best hope for a peaceful solution to the Internet's war on professional journalism. A man who many blame for commodifying, globalizing, sensationalizing, and cheapening news is considering taking a stand against a force even bigger than himself: the Web link.

more at the Daily Beast

My Narrative Lab

So, both for fun and in my ongoing effort to find a university homebase, I'm going to teach a course called Narrative Lab at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program next semester. You have to be in the program to take it, but I'll try to keep some component online for the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, though, here's an example of me actually doing interactive narrative – and a newspaper writer, from the Guardian (of course), who seems to totally grok what it is we're after:

But a...

Exoriare

I just finished a new graphic novel – the first in a series I'm working on that will dig a reality tunnel through the universe of a video game series. Crazy stuff, but I'm the linear guy on the project (if you can believe that) so it's not quite as brain-decimating as it could be.

Here's the preview, along with a trailhead:

http://exoriare.com/

It should be available as a printed volume of 120 pages or so in a few months.

Writing for gamers is harder than writing for regular people because I...

RAW UnDead

Robert Anton Wilson will be my guest on The Media Squat this Monday evening.

Alas, he'll be visiting via magnetic recording tape, and not in the flesh. He's the next in our series of Media Squat Classics – people whose ideas and approaches form the basis of the media squat ethos.

Live from Second Life

I'm doing a "live" appearance in Second Life, this Sunday evening at 9p Eastern, for CopperRobot.

We'll be talking about Life Inc, especially in the context of how people create value on the net – and whether there's a way for any significant number of us to make a living at it, anymore.

If you don't go to Second Life, you can also watch it as live video on the web.

My search for a teaching home begins

Following my own advice to go local, I'm ready to settle down in a real place and time. I'm hoping that will be teaching media, interactivity, and narrative in a friendly, NY-area program that offers me a place to do it in an ongoing way. Strange to have a moment of "openness" like this.

To that end, I'm doing talks at some of my favorite schools in the area, to meet people and let my intentions be known. Two weeks ago, I had a great time at the New School – where I was truly inspired by the ...

Digital Nation: Predator Drones

The PBS Digital Nation team just completed a great new segment on the predator drones being used in Pakistan and Afghanistan. This documentary (I'm one of the writers and commentators) is actually shaping up to be pretty interesting. Here's my Daily Beast column on some of the issues underlying the use of virtual fighting machines.

Goldman gets away with it, again

I hope everyone who reads my posts already understands that the real beneficiary of the AIG bailout was Goldman Sachs. In brief, Goldman made money underwriting mortgage investments that it sold to various pension funds. Goldman suspected that the investments were doomed, and leveraged a whole lot of money to make bets against the very investments it was underwriting and selling.

When the mortgage industry collapsed, Goldman won very very big. They were right to bet against the investment...

Another nice review

I can't figure out who this is writing, but they definitely got what I was going for with Life Inc. It's a site called Daily Mortgage Rates – but it's basically reviews of books.

The last chapter of the book, "Here and Now," subtitled "The Opportunity to Reconnect," is in fact better than any marketing book, and may give you great ideas of companies that can make a difference. As the author reminds us in the previous chapter, PayPal's original plan was to offer an alternative payment...