Douglas Rushkoff's Blog, page 46

I'm Speaking in Brooklyn this Thursday Evening

Barring catastrophe, I'll be speaking in Brooklyn this Thursday evening, September 24, 7:30 kicking off a new series of talks at The Change You Want to See Gallery in Williamsburgh: 84 Havemeyer Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211

From the series description: "If advertising is the engine of capitalism, then brands are its symbolic currency. Branding is a complex communications system of signifiers that leverages psychoanalytical principals of irrationality and desire. As activists and socially...

Paul Krassner – back on The MediaSquat

I'm delighted to be doing an in-depth interview with my hero and now friend, Paul Krassner, this coming Monday evening on my WFMU show, The MediaSquat.

We'll be celebrating his new book, Who's to Say What's Obscene:

Politics, Culture & Comedy in America Today, and talking about everything from the Manson murders to 9-11, and Lenny Bruce to Stephen Colbert. I'm particularly interested in hearing his views on the role of satire to raise awareness – and whether it promotes or stalls activism.

...

DailyKos – Review and Live Chat Tonight

Here's my favorite review of Life Inc, so far. Maybe it's enough to get Rachel Maddow's people to notice the book.

What I like about the reviewer's approach is that he gets the book is not about particular corporations or CEOs being evil. I didn't write a typical critique of corporate activity at all, but rather an analysis of the real reasons corporations and central currency were developed, and why these mechanisms can't help but operate the way they do today. It's not a matter of making...

Wall Street Journal on Local Currency

Here's a nice piece from the Wall Street Journal on complimentary and bottom-up currencies, including a terrific last third on Life Inc and my local success story, Comfort Dollars.

Jon Lebkowsky on Life Inc

Jon Lebkowsky, of Fringeware fame, just wrote an insightful piece on Life Inc and its underlying premise.

At WorldChanging.com

There's no doubt that corporate form really has been foundational in organizing our perception of the world, more deeply generation after generation, and it's not surprising that global citizens of developed and developing nations organize their thinking around those patterns. When we talk about "developed" and "developing," we're talking about corporatization — the...

Note to Book People: We're Back

I just wrote a little piece for Publishers Weekly on why publishing is on the way back:

The corporate consolidation of publishing over the past two decades has finally maxed out. Borders is verging on bankruptcy; Barnes & Noble is closing stores; and major media conglomerates are closing imprints and ejecting talent faster than they gobbled it up in the 1990s. While this makes for some bleak headlines in the short term, it bodes well for the future of a publishing industry that operates on a scal

George Dyson on 'Economics is Not a Science'

One of my heroes, George Dyson, posted this in reaction to my recent Edge essay, Economics is Not a Natural Science.

Rushkoff is right: our 21st-century global computing platform is still running a 13th-century banking system, and the resulting performance sucks.

In any hydrodynamic system, the non-dimensional Reynolds Number characterizes the ratio between inertial forces (the result of mass and velocity) to viscous forces (the result of the inherent stickiness of the fluid). When the Reynolds

National Healthcare: Socialism vs. Corporatism

The healthcare debate has gotten so weird, I think it's time someone (I guess me) says what's actually going on. I do not presume to have the answers to all of these problems (well, actually I think I have most of it figured out) but all I mean to do is share what appears to be happening. It is bizarre. Let's start simple.

Obama said he wanted national healthcare, and presented Congress with a bill that would create a public health insurance option for people who can't or won't afford the ones of

An End to Movements

Just posted a piece on Arthur Magazine about the ineffectiveness – and maybe obsolescence – of movements. Here's a snippet:

The best techniques for galvanizing a movement have long been co-opted and surpassed by public relations and advertising firms. Whether a movement is real or Astroturf has become almost impossible for even discerning viewers to figure out. The question often becomes the new content of the Sunday morning news panel, taking the place of whatever real issue might have been addr

Economics is Not a Natural Science

With a great deal of editorial guidance from John Brockman, I've just posted my first Edge.org essay, Economics is not a Natural Science.

We must stop perpetuating the fiction that existence itself is dictated by the immutable laws of economics. These so-called laws are, in actuality, the economic mechanisms of 13th Century monarchs. Some of us analyzing digital culture and its impact on business must reveal economics as the artificial construction it really is. Although it may be subjected to t