Douglas Rushkoff's Blog, page 8
April 17, 2020
Team Human Serialization #31: We Were Naive To Think Digital Media Would Be Democratic
Wewere naive to think that digital technology would be intrinsically and inevitably more empowering than any medium that came before it. Yes, digital networks are more directionless and decentralized than their broadcast predecessors. They allow messages to flow from the bottom up, or the outside in. But, like all media, if they’re not consciously seized by the people seeking empowerment, they’ll be seized by someone or something else.
Whoever controls media controls society.
Read more: https://medium.com/team-human/we-were...
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April 15, 2020
Team Human ep. 152: Reverend Billy & Savitri D “Charging the Wildness”
Playing for Team Human today, Founders of the Stop Shopping Choir, Reverend Billy and Savitri D.
They show us how we can retrieve the spirit of play and performance in our shared effort to keep this planet thriving.
You can support the Team Human podcast on Patreon and subscribe to the Team Human podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
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April 14, 2020
Team Human Serialization #30: How Interactive Tech Became Opaque
Those of us who witnessed the dawn of the interactive era originally believed that digital technology was going to bring back the human powers and priorities that industrialization had vanquished.
The earliest interactive tools, such as the television remote control, changed our relationship to programming. Where breaking the captive spell of television used to require walking up to the set and physically turning a dial, the remote let us escape with the micro-motion of a single finger. As cable television expanded the offerings, we found ourselves less watching a particular TV program than playing the TV itself: moving from channel to channel and keeping track of multiple shows, or observing the similarities and contrasts between them.
Read more from: “How Online Tech Became Opaque“
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March 26, 2020
We Wish to Inform You That Your Death Is Highly Profitable
Have you heard the good news? Donald Trump is suggesting our freeze on businesses as a measure to curb coronavirus may end as soon as Monday. Yes, allowing people to go back to work could lead to more widespread infection, but the deaths of a few hundred thousand — if not a few million — more of us is a small price to pay for rescuing the American economy from collapse. In the president’s words, “we can’t have the cure be worse than the problem itself.”
Trump’s message is clear: The economy is not here to serve human beings; human beings are here to serve the economy. Those of us who die in service to the Dow Jones Industrial Average are mere externalities to the higher priority of capital growth. Like the destruction of the environment, our illnesses and deaths are a necessary cost of doing business. We cannot surrender to the depressing verdicts of doctors and scientists, lest we deflate the hope and optimism that make America great.
Read more from: “We Wish To Inform You That Your Death is Highly Profitable” from Medium’s Gen.
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March 6, 2020
October 30, 2019
Team Human serialization begins today on Medium!
The entirety of my latest book, Team Human, is being serialized on Medium, at http://medium.com/team-human
That’s right: approximately one section of the manifesto will be published every week for the next 100 weeks. The book was written in 100 aphoristic statements for easy reading and sharing, so getting one per week seems just about the right pace to give everyone something to chew on or even discuss with others who are following along. I’ll be checking the comments sections regularly to answer questions or discuss the issues raised.
Of course, if anyone gets impatient with reading the book one section at a time they are more than welcome to purchase a physical, digital, or audio copy from their favorite bookseller.
Team Human is a manifesto for promoting human autonomy in a world increasingly designed to repress it. It’s meant to help us remember that being human is a team sport. We evolved to collaborate, not to compete. And real science, sociology, and even economics supports this truth.
It’s not too late to make our world hospitable to humanity, and humanity a positive force for this world. Instead of optimizing people for technology or the marketplace, we can optimize technology and the market for human flourishing.
Team Human is a set of arguments to help anyone make a case for promoting human values in business, politics, education, technology, and life. It is important to me that these arguments are accessible and usable by real people right now.
So please accept this offering, come back every Wednesday morning for another dose of pro-human logic, and feel free share the ones that resonate for you with anyone you like. I believe these are ideas worth connecting over.
Find the others.
Douglas
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May 30, 2019
May 25, 2019
Team Human – Mastering the Digital
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