Douglas Rushkoff
Photo by Johannes Kroemer
Douglas Rushkoff is a writer, lecturer, media theorist and sometimes musician. He rose to prominence with his first book, Cyberia, a collection of his journalistic coverage of the early days of cyberculture. He has since written several books – including fiction, non-fiction and comic books – critical of the ways large companies use media to manipulate individuals and the state of business culture in general. He has also performed with Genesis P-Orridge and Psychic TV as a keyboardist.
Although Rushkoff started off optimistic about the role the Internet and network culture as tools for liberation, he has since come to view these technologies as new systems of control. His most recent book, Program or Be Programmed, is a call to arms for individual to become more tech and media savvy.
His latest book Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now was published March 21, 2013.
He’s now a professor of media studies at CUNY/Queens College.
Official Sites
Writings
- Rushkoff on the idea of “present shock.”
- Technologies Have Biases
- Rushkoff on Occupy Wall Street
- Rushkoff on why we should abandon the corporate Internet
- Rushkoff: Let Them Fail, plus my critical response. March 2009.
- Rushkoff on why the discovery of alien life would change everything. 2009.
- Rushkoff on our rigged credit system. 2008.
- On 9/11 Conspiracy Theories 2007
- On faith as a public health crisis, and a follow-up. 2006.
- Be Your Own Guru
- Evolution as a Team Sport
- Open Source Democracy
- Rushkoff on the history of Wired Magazine’s connections to the Global Business Network. 1997.
- Rushkoff on playing keyboards with Psychic TV
Interviews
- Mindful Cyborgs interview by Chris Dancy and me on the anniversary of the release of Present Shock.
- Wide ranging interview from June 2012
- Technoccult interview with Rushkoff April 2011
- First part of my interview with Rushkoff, published at ReadWriteWeb April 2011
- Rushkoff interview comics writer Harvey Pekar – in comic form 2010
- Rushkoff talks Life Inc with Richard Metzger, plus my criticism of Rushkoff’s thinking as presented in this interview. April 2009.
- Rushkoff interview on alternative currencies. April 2009.
- Douglass Rushkoff in Conversation with Genesis P. Orridge One conversation between the two from 2003, and one from 2007.
- New World Disorder’s Jason Lubyk interviews Rushkoff for Gpod 2007
- Interview with Rushkoff, July 2004
- Rushkoff talks about his graphic novel Club Zero G June 2004
Talks
Above: Rushkoff at Webvisions 2011
Above: Rushkoff on why branding doesn’t work at Pivot 2010 (the video player is a little weird, his is the second to last talk on Day 3) My notes here.
- Rushkoff Keynote at Rhizome’s 7 on 7 Festival
- Rushkoff on Program or Be Programmed at SXSW 2010
- Rushkoff debates Daniel Pinchbeck
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