Douglas Rushkoff, author of the book Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commmands for a Digital Age, argues that we need to take control of our digital tools or they, and the people who program those tools, will take control of us.
Technology such as Twitter and Facebook doesn’t cause addiction, or ignorance, or shallow, snap decisions, or bullying, Rushkoff says in his book. These things happen because of how we choose to use those technologies — or, rather, how we allow the creators of those tools to choose for us.
“People are too ready to blame technology,” Rushkoff told me in an interview. “So many people are out there writing books about what is technology doing to us, but it’s such a passive construct. Why don’t we ask instead what we are doing to each other through technology?”
Listen to my interview with Rushkoff on the latest episode of Copper Robot:
Technology has built-in biases that often cause us to behave badly toward each other, Rushkoff says. For example, Facebook doesn’t exist to help people make friends, it’s there to monetize relationships.
“With notable few exceptions, most of the technologies that we use, most of the software that we use, isn’t really there to serve the user, so much as the programmer or the person paying the programmer, especially if those things are free,” Rushkoff said. “They may give us something, like the ability to search, or the ability to link, or the ability to upload a video, but they’re biased toward other things.
“What I’m arguing that people do is really just come to learn what the technologies they’re using were made for, who programmed it, and why, the way you teach a young person to watch television. You say,’Yeah, I know that commercial made you want to buy something really badly, but who made that commercial, what techniques do they use to make you buy that thing, who’s paying for this commercial?’ The same basic skills we apply to traditional media we need to apply to digital media, to programmed media as well. And in order to do that, we need to know a little something about programming.”
We talked about how the computer has no sense of time, therefore encouraging immediate, unthinking responses. We also talked about why Rushkoff chose to go with a small publisher for this book, rather than a big publishing house.
We did not talk about which hand Rushkoff uses to masturbate — although that question was a near miss.
This is my second interview with Rushkoff; I talked with him almost exactly a year ago about his book Life, Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and how To Take It Back. Listen to that interview here.
http://www.mediabastard.wordpress.com
A little late…lol
- but like Lanier’s book, so many late 40 somethings are seeing the reality of their virtual ways.
I expect Steven Johnson to next write year he didnt mean that “what was bad for you.. is.”..lol
These were/are pundits, pundits that the machine rewarded -because- they played by the machines rulez. They made technology a FASHION we serve, not a tool to serve us. And how ironic they use words and still cant afford the electric machines of even “old mass media” to keep repeating their new messages.
Program or be Programmed? I would rather see Humans DO with CARE first, rather than CRITIQUE others works with THOUGHT LEADER badges later.:)
At least the ideas of the Media Studies folks who failed at raising the IQ of the mass about TV and radio will be repeated.
Yes, we create vast wastelands or vibrant gardens, and neither are usually as vast or vibrant as they seem;)
mediabastard
I will read the book with interest, but frankly, the sound of it — an imperative to program — sounds like the old “patch or GTFO” of the open source freaks. We shouldn’t *have* to become programmers or program to wrestle these programmed tools to the ground and make them serve us, instead of us serving them and the “code of law” of their makers.
I think it would be better to drain the geek religion out of the tools first, however, then try to reclaim them.
http://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state/2010/11/10-reasons-why-you-dont-want-to-adapt-geek-open-source-culture-even-if-you-use-open-source-tools.html
Rushkoffs making the right points, and he does do his literate homework… but he still suffers from the ailment that his very rational ways just go to “feed” the machine. His SWSX audience or that at the current TED’s that lost the E for Entertainment- and have substituted it with a G for Govern- just use his “fame” to underscore their own “meta agendas”.
Let’s face it, hes become a Jon Stewart with out the “funny” timing.
Maybe the same fate that fell McLuhan, as he became a talk show oddity in his later years.
I dont think its the “we should become programmers” meme hes speading, but the “know your media” one…
the problem is really insideous since the medium he’s questioning is designed to use his contrarian remarks against him.
The media induced psychosis that has infected us all for decades….
So IF the techno-religion is what replaced science,reason and the humans god, how does one end it?,, i think the only answer is to present enough evidence of its harm that eventually “the faith” of its borg drones must question themselves.
the only other answer is one of violence… but that is how religious wars go.
More rewards for doing- less for reporting. Especially in the digital age, where artifacts are temporary and too easily “aquired”
http://mediabastard.wordpress.com/2010/11/24/how-i-predicted-the-future-by-making-fun-of-the-present/
Funny how serindipity works…maybe it was god talking?;)
Coupland, McLuhan, Gen X, Postliterates, and the Web link… strange days indeed.
c3