Douglas Rushkoff is obsessed with technology and how it impacts our lives. In this interview, he offers insight into how we shape and are shaped by technology, what’s happening with mainstream media, and some tips on remaining sane online.
Now available on: YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Transcript
Rushkoff is an author, professor, and documentarian who focuses on the ways people, culture, and institutions create, share and influence each other’s values. He is the author of 17 books including the 2019 release Team Human, and he is a Professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics at CUNY/Queens.
Here are a few highlights from the conversation:
It’s hard to know whether the media and technologies that emerge and are successful because of a pre-existing cultural accordance for that thing, or whether the new technology or medium comes and then makes us all like that.
I’m looking forward to a day when people start appreciating their experiences for their own sake again and realizing that if you’re reporting on the party, you’re not at the party.
My advice to the regular listener, reader, or person, a person like me, is, honestly go to real media for your information. Go to social media for your play.
Because I feel like we’re trying to auto-tune ourselves. We’re living in a digital media environment where everything is quantized.
I get most emotional now, at small acts of kindness. The smallest things.
If you don’t breathe, you fall down and die quickly.
And so much more.
