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Playing the Future: How Kids' Culture Can Teach Us to Thrive in an Age of Chaos
Can a decreased attention span make us smarter consumers? How can the Power Rangers get us jobs in the high-tech workplace? Could the ultraviolet world of Doom actually be good for our kids?
From an emergent guru of cyberculture come surprising answers to these questions and an exuberant, myth-shattering look at our future as seen through the life-styles of today's youth. Rushkoff draws a welter of remarkably commonsensical conclusions about how we can learn from our kids to flourish in the next millennium - as they will.
For those of us who grew up before computers became ubiquitous, the world is like a foreign country and we are its immigrants. Our kids - Rushkoff calls them "screenagers" - are like those of any immigrant, fitting themselves more naturally into this terra incognita than we can. Rushkoff demystifies the appeal of dozens of kids' cultural totems - Barney, Power Rangers, Pogs, skateboards, Nintendo, Beavis and Butt-head, gangsta rap, body piercing, and more - that have unnerved or baffled parents, pundits, and educators. He also goes beyond mere explanation to prove how the trappings of screenagers' lives are preparing them for the future, a discontinuous realm where surprise is the only constant and information pours in from innumerable sources at warp speed. Finally, Rushkoff shows how we can alter our own work habits and worldviews to incorporate the playful wisdom that will ensure screenagers' success in the unpredictable world that's already upon us.
From an emergent guru of cyberculture come surprising answers to these questions and an exuberant, myth-shattering look at our future as seen through the life-styles of today's youth. Rushkoff draws a welter of remarkably commonsensical conclusions about how we can learn from our kids to flourish in the next millennium - as they will.
For those of us who grew up before computers became ubiquitous, the world is like a foreign country and we are its immigrants. Our kids - Rushkoff calls them "screenagers" - are like those of any immigrant, fitting themselves more naturally into this terra incognita than we can. Rushkoff demystifies the appeal of dozens of kids' cultural totems - Barney, Power Rangers, Pogs, skateboards, Nintendo, Beavis and Butt-head, gangsta rap, body piercing, and more - that have unnerved or baffled parents, pundits, and educators. He also goes beyond mere explanation to prove how the trappings of screenagers' lives are preparing them for the future, a discontinuous realm where surprise is the only constant and information pours in from innumerable sources at warp speed. Finally, Rushkoff shows how we can alter our own work habits and worldviews to incorporate the playful wisdom that will ensure screenagers' success in the unpredictable world that's already upon us.
- GenresNonfictionTechnology
288 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1996
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About the author
Douglas Rushkoff
110 books1,013 followersDouglas Rushkoff is a New York-based writer, columnist and lecturer on technology, media and popular culture.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 8, 2008
Subtitled "How Kids' Culture Can Teach Us to Thrive in an Age of Chaos" Rushkoff discusses the relationship of skateboarding to chaos theory. I'm only on p. 35, and the chapter title is The Fall of Linear Thinking and the Rise of Chaos. This is one of those books that jumped off a table at a book warehouse. I'm an educator trying to make sense out of public school education in the digital age, so hopefully I will offer a more enlightening review when I finish the book.
June 29, 2007
"edutainment" done right. i would read Anything by Rushkoff.
May 3, 2008
Douglas Rushkoff is a media futurist. This book has a good thesis but it is written for thinker, not most people.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews