Bøger af Douglas Rushkoff

The promise and perils of the digital economy - and how we can use it to create prosperity for allThe digital economy was supposed to create a new age of prosperity for everyone. But as Facebook resells our data for billions and self-driving cars threaten to put drivers out of work, it has so far only exacerbated the gap between winners and losers. Yet the possibility of an economic Renaissance still lingers - if we seize the opportunity now. In The Growth Trap, Douglas Rushkoff identifies this crucial economic turning point and calls on everyone to remake the economic operating system from the inside out - to redistribute wealth and prosper along the way. With practical steps matched by incisive analysis, The Growth Trap offers a pragmatic, optimistic, and human-centered model for economic progress in the digital age.

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.

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.

Set in the near-future (2008), Exit Strategy is a darkly comic send-up of the dot.com mania of the late 1990s and a modern-day retelling of the story of Joseph. Like Joseph, Jamie Cohen is betrayed by his compadres but unexpectedly finds himself at the right hand of power. He helps a huge venture capitalist build pyramids - except these are investment pyramids based on technology idols. An additional narrative conceit is this: 200 years later, anthropologists find the virtual manuscript of Exit Strategy and begin annotating the text. Hundreds of readers have already contributed footnotes for the book - they are charming, wacky, compelling and Rushkoff has selected one hundred of his favorites for inclusion.

Likening the internet transformation to the intellectual and technological ferment of the Enlightment, the author suggests we have a remarkable opportunity to re-integrate our new perspective with the work we actually do. He offers a vision of the simple and effective ways businesses can re-invigorate themselves.

People spent the twentieth century obsessed with the future. We created technologies that would help connect us faster, gather news, map the planet, and compile knowledge. We strove for an instantaneous network where time and space could be compressed. Well, the future's arrived. We live in a continuous now enabled by Twitter, email, and a so-called real-time technological shift. Yet this "now" is an elusive goal that we can never quite reach. And the dissonance between our digital selves and our analog bodies has thrown us into a new state of anxiety: present shock.

Douglas Rushkoff was mugged outside his apartment on Christmas Eve, but when he posted a friendly warning on his community website, the responses castigated him for potentially harming the local real-estate market.