Tag Archives | Douglas Rushkoff

The Demise Of Facebook

By on January 8, 2011 in News 57

Facebook logoDouglas Rushkoff called the impending doom of AOL when it’s hapless merger with Time Warner was announced. Now he says Facebook is cashing out and it’s the beginning of its demise, in an opinion piece at CNN:

All signs for Facebook appear to be pointing up.

Mark Zuckerberg is Time’s Man of the Year, the movie about him seems likely to be an Oscar winner, and now Goldman Sachs is raising $1.5 billion from its favorite investors on behalf of the social networking company.

At the very same moment, Facebook’s only real competitor –NewsCorps’ waning social networking site, MySpace — is shedding employees and expenses, most likely in hopes of a fire sale.

But appearances can be deceiving. In fact, as I read the situation, we are witnessing the beginning of the end of Facebook. These aren’t the symptoms of a company that is winning, but one that is cashing out.

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Harvey Pekar & Doug Rushkoff: How Life Got Incorporated

By on December 13, 2010 in News 1

Two pop culture mainstays, comic book legend Harvey Pekar (RIP) and author/media theorist Doug Rushkoff collaborated on a graphic adaptation of Doug’s book Life Inc: How Corporatism Conquered the World, and How We Can Take It Back for SMITH Magazine as part of the Pekar Project. Part 2 has just been published by SMITH (sample panel below) and if you missed it, you might want to check out Part 1 first. Not to be forgotten, artist Sean Pryor.

Source: SMITH Magazine

Source: SMITH Magazine

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Rushkoff: Why Johnny Can’t Program

By on October 1, 2010 in News 12

ComputerkidsDoug Rushkoff bemoans the lack of programming in education, at Huffington Post:

Ask any kid what Facebook is for and he’ll tell you it’s there to help him make friends. What else could he think? It’s how he *does* make friends. He has no idea the real purpose of the software, and the people coding it, is to monetize his relationships. He isn’t even aware of those people, the program, or their purpose.

The kids I celebrated in my early books as “digital natives” capable of seeing through all efforts of big media and marketing have actually proven *less* capable of discerning the integrity of the sources they read and the intentions of the programs they use. If they don’t know what the programs they are using are even for, they don’t stand a chance to use them effectively. They are less likely to become power users than the used.

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Rushkoff Says Sell Now

By on July 8, 2010 in News 4
Crowd outside the New York Stock Exchange after the 1929 crash.

Crowd outside the New York Stock Exchange after the 1929 crash.

Doug Rushkoff, counterculture guru and all-round incredibly smart dude has some worrying advice, just posted on his blog:

Yes, this is really it. The beginning of a true end-of-cycle economically.

If you own “stocks,” use these bounces to get out completely. If you have to park your money somewhere, consider yourself lucky you have money to park.

The object of the game for those who actually have capital is not how to grow it, but how to keep it. Capital has driven our economy since 1300, and the recent bull market was the end of a cycle that began in the mid-1700′s.

The fact that it is ending is not the end of the world at all. It just means that there’s a whole lot of money out there with no place to go. People can’t find a place to park their money because there’s more money looking for investment than there is stuff to invest in.

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First They Came For The Musicians…

By on June 16, 2010 in News 4

Douglas Rushkoff writes of the perils of believing that everything journalistic can be handled effectively by well-meaning amateurs, for Harvard’s Nieman Reports:

First they came for the musicians, and I did not speak out—because I am not a musician. Then they came for the filmmakers, and I did not speak out—because I am not a filmmaker. Then they came for the journalists, and there was no one left to speak out for us.

In a media universe that for so many decades, even centuries, seemed stacked against the amateur, the Internet has made a revolutionary impact. Previously, the only law of physics that seemed to apply to the top-down, corporate-driven media space was that of gravity. King George II, William Randolph Hearst, or even Rupert Murdoch would decide what the public should believe and then print that version of reality. And inventions from the printing press to radio, which once seemed to be returning media to the people’s hands, were quickly monopolized by the powers that be.

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Program Or Be Programmed: Programming Is Our Era’s Equivalent Of Literacy

By on May 15, 2010 in News 0

Obama Hates iPadsFascinating, albeit brief, comments by Doug Rushkoff on his blog. I can’t wait to hear more of his thoughts – I think he’s right, but what does it really mean in practice for those of who who aren’t programmers and are well past college?

I am writing Program or Be Programmed as a book. I will be done soon. Weeks, not months. Recent events in the Facebook and Apple universes have convinced me more than ever that programming is our era’s equivalent of literacy. Whether corporations are controlling the direction of technology, or whether technology is an emergent entity doing this on its own, our only option is to participate in its unfolding by participating in its programming…

Obama recently told a college audience that they’re being distracted by their iPads, and that they need to become aware of who is programming the devices they use. He is right…

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Doug Rushkoff’s New Film, ‘Digital Nation’

By on February 2, 2010 in News 0

Make sure to check out Doug Rushkoff’s new film for PBS (Feb. 2 @ 9 PM or watch it on the PBS site). Here’s what Doug posted on his blog:

Digital Nation – a PBS Frontline documentary I’ve been working on for, gosh, two years now – is finally airing this coming Tuesday evening, Feb 2, at 9pm on pretty much all PBS stations in US. (I know: that’s during the Lost premiere that even Obama feared going up against. But you can Tivo Lost, watch us live, and watch Lost after without the commercials.)

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Douglas Rushkoff On Corporations As Uber-Citizens

By on January 26, 2010 in News 0

Long-time friend of disinformation Doug Rushkoff always has great insight on cultural matters. This considered essay following the Supreme Court’s controversial decision last week permitting corporations to finance political parties is one of the best I’ve read so far:

Yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling was positive in one respect: it made law out of what was already happening. While corporations earned “personhood” back in the 1860’s when a court clerk (likely bribed) added this language into the margins of another court decision, they never quite had the rights of citizenship before. They already write our laws (through lobbies) elect our leaders (with money) and create public opinion (with money and PR). If you’re interested in how and why that happened, please read my book Life Inc. But they have always tended to do so by working around government’s efforts to limit their influence.

It was a losing game for a government by the people, of course, because almost no one gets into office without the kind of corporate assistance they need to pay back if they want to get into office again.

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