Douglas Rushkoff – författare

‘A devastating portrait of the cultures and logics underlying big tech. Rushkoff is going to make you mad enough to fight back. A vital, lucid, and enraging read.’ Naomi Klein, author of This Changes EverythingThe tech elite have a plan to survive the apocalypse: they want to leave us all behind. When Douglas Rushkoff was summoned to the desert to a private talk for the rich and powerful, he learned about ‘The Mindset’: a theory that inevitable societal catastrophe can be evaded by individuals with enough money and the right technology. Here, Rushkoff traces the evolution of The Mindset through its origins in science and technology to its current expression in missions to Mars, island bunkers, and the Metaverse. This mind-blowing work of social analysis shows us how to transcend the landscape The Mindset has created — a world alive with algorithms and intelligences actively rewarding our most selfish tendencies — and rediscover community, mutual aid, and human interdependency.

A deep dive into one of this century's most potent questions: do we direct technology, or do we let ourselves be directed by it?This compact new edition of a paradigmatic text packs a big and actionable punch. Updated with a new section on the unique challenges posed by AI, Program or Be Programmed presents a spirited, accessible poetics of new media. On these pages (and screens), Rushkoff picks up where Marshall McLuhan left off, helping readers recognize programming as the new literacy of the digital age.The debate over whether the internet is good or bad for us fills the airwaves and the blogosphere. But for all the heat of claim and counter-claim, the argument is essentially beside the point: it’s here; it’s everywhere. The real question is, do we direct technology, or do we let ourselves be directed by it and those who have mastered it? “Choose the former,” writes Rushkoff, “and you gain access to the control panel of civilization. Choose the latter, and it could be the last real choice you get to make.” In eleven “commands,” Rushkoff provides cyberenthusiasts and technophobes alike with the guidelines to navigate this new universe.

Why doesn t the explosive growth of companies like Facebook and Uber deliver more prosperity for everyone? What is the systemic problem that sets the rich against the poor and the technologists against everybody else? When protesters shattered the windows of a bus carrying Google employees to work, their anger may have been justifiable, but it was misdirected. The true conflict of our age isn t between the unemployed and the digital elite, or even the 99 percent and the 1 percent. Rather, a tornado of technological improvements has spun our economic program out of control, and humanity as a whole the protesters and the Google employees as well as the shareholders and the executives are all trapped by the consequences. It s time to optimize our economy for the human beings it s supposed to be serving. In this groundbreaking book, acclaimed media scholar and author Douglas Rushkoff tells us how to combine the best of human nature with the best of modern technology. Tying together disparate threads big data, the rise of robots and AI, the increasing participation of algorithms in stock market trading, the gig economy, the collapse of the eurozone Rushkoff provides a critical vocabulary for our economic moment and a nuanced portrait of humans and commerce at a critical crossroads.

Why doesn't the explosive growth of companies such as Facebook and Uber deliver more prosperity for everyone? How could things be different?In San Francisco in 2013 activists protesting against the gentrification of their city smashed the windows of a bus carrying Google employees to work. But these protests weren't just a question of the activists versus the Googlers, or even the 99 per cent versus the 1 per cent. Rather they were symptomatic of the true conflict of our age, between humanity as a whole and a digital economy in which boundless growth is valued above all else.In this groundbreaking book, Douglas Rushkoff - named one of the world's ten most influential thinkers by MIT - lays out a ground plan for a different economic and social future. Ranging from big data to the rise of robots, from the gig economy to the collapse of the eurozone, Rushkoff shows how we can combine the best of human nature with the best of modern technology to achieve a state of sustainable, distributed wealth.It's time the economy finally worked for the human beings it's supposed to serve.'Douglas Rushkoff is one of today's most incisive media theorists and a provocative critic of our digital economy. He's also fun to read'WALTER ISAACSON, president and CEO, The Aspen Institute, and author of Steve Jobs and The Innovators'If you don't know Rushkoff, you're not serious about figuring out what's going to happen next'SETH GODIN, author of Purple Cow and Tribes

In one hundred lean and incisive statements, Douglas Rushkoff argues that we are essentially social creatures and that we achieve our greatest aspirations when we work together—not as individuals. Yet today society is threatened by a vast antihuman infrastructure that undermines our ability to connect. Money, once a means of exchange, is now a means of exploitation; education, conceived as a way to elevate the working class, has become another assembly line; and the internet has only further divided us into increasingly atomised and radicalised groups.Team Human delivers a call to arms. If we are to resist and survive these destructive forces, we must recognise that being human is a team sport. In Rushkoff’s own words: “Being social may be the whole point”. Harnessing wide-ranging research on human evolution, biology and psychology, Rushkoff shows that when we work together we realise greater happiness, productivity and peace. If we can find others who understand this fundamental truth and reassert our humanity—together—we can make the world a better place to be human.

Five mysterious billionaires summoned Douglas Rushkoff to a desert resort for a private talk. The topic? How to survive The Event: the societal catastrophe they know is coming. Rushkoff came to understand that these men were under the influence of The Mindset, a Silicon Valley–style certainty that they can break the laws of physics, economics and morality to escape a disaster of their own making—as long as they have enough money and the right technology. In Survival of the Richest, Rushkoff traces the origins of The Mindset in science and technology through its current expression in missions to Mars, island bunkers and the Metaverse. This mind-blowing work of social analysis shows us how to transcend the landscape The Mindset created—a world alive with algorithms and intelligences actively rewarding our most selfish tendencies—and rediscover community, mutual aid and human interdependency. Instead of changing the people, he argues, we can change the programme.

Five mysterious billionaires summoned Douglas Rushkoff to a desert resort for a private talk. The subject? How to survive the "Event": the societal collapse they know is coming. Rushkoff argues that these men were under the influence of The Mindset, a Silicon Valley–style certainty that they and their cohort can escape a disaster of their own making—as long as they have enough money and the right technology.Rushkoff traces the origins of The Mindset in science and technology through its current expression in missions to Mars, island bunkers, AI futurism, and the metaverse. Through fascinating characters—master programmers who want to remake the world as if redesigning a video game and bankers who return from Burning Man convinced incentivized capitalism will prevent environmental disasters—Rushkoff explains why those with the most power to change the world have no interest in doing so. He argues that the only way to survive the coming catastrophe is to ensure it doesn’t happen by rediscovering community, mutual aid, and human interdependency.Anticipating the mass layoffs and institutional collapse that have recently rocked Silicon Valley, Rushkoff’s Survival of the Richest is "a necessary and timely read" (Los Angeles Review of Books) with a prophetic message about the future of tech and our human community.

This book makes a far-reaching, accessible case the positive impact that digital technologies will have on our ability to participate more actively a thoughtfully in the future. The author looks to 1 world of young people he calls ""ScreenAgers"" clues about the future landscape. This brand new updated version of includes not just new examples but new ideas and conclusions drawn based on years of experience watching these ideas become incorporated into academic, business, education and culture.