Douglas Rushkoff | |
|---|---|
 Douglas Rushkoff at 2023 SXSW | |
| Born | (1961-02-18)February 18, 1961 (age 64) New York City, US |
| Occupation | Media theorist, writer, columnist, lecturer,graphic novelist, documentarian |
| Education | Princeton University (BA) California Institute of the Arts (MA) American Film Institute Utrecht University (PhD) |
| Subject | American media |
| Spouse | Barbara Kligman |
| Children | 1 |
| Website | |
| rushkoff | |
Douglas Mark Rushkoff (born February 18, 1961) is an Americanmedia theorist, writer, columnist, lecturer, graphic novelist, and documentarian. He is best known for his association with the earlycyberpunk culture and his advocacy ofopen-source solutions to social problems.
Rushkoff is most frequently regarded as amedia theorist and is known for coining terms and concepts includingviral media (or media virus),digital native, andsocial currency.[citation needed] He has written ten books on media, technology and culture. He wrote the first syndicated column oncyberculture forThe New York Times Syndicate, as well as regular columns forThe Guardian of London,[1]Arthur,[2]Discover,[3] and theonline magazinesDaily Beast,[4] andTheFeature.
Rushkoff is currently Professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics at theCity University of New York, Queens College. He has previously lectured atThe New School university in Manhattan[5] and the Interactive Telecommunications Program atNew York University'sTisch School of the Arts, where he created the Narrative Lab.[6] In 2012, Rushkoff was declared the sixth most influentialthinker in the world byMIT Technology Review, followingSteven Pinker,David Graeber,Nobel Prize-winnerDaniel Kahneman,Thilo Sarrazin, andRichard Florida.[7][8]
Rushkoff was born in New York City, New York, and is the son of Sheila, a psychiatric social worker, and Marvin Rushkoff, a hospital administrator.[9] His older brother, Bennett, has served as an administrative law judge inWashington, D.C.
Rushkoff graduated fromPrinceton University in 1983.[10] He moved to Los Angeles and completed aMaster of Fine Arts in Directing from theCalifornia Institute of the Arts. Later he took up apost-graduate fellowship from theAmerican Film Institute.[11] He was a PhD candidate atUtrecht University's New Media Program, writing a dissertation on new media literacies,[12] which was approved in June, 2012.[13]
Rushkoff emerged in the early 1990s as an active member of the cyberpunk movement, developing friendships and collaborations with people includingTimothy Leary,RU Sirius,Paul Krassner,Robert Anton Wilson,Ralph Abraham,Terence McKenna,Genesis P-Orridge,Ralph Metzner,Grant Morrison,Mark Pesce,Erik Davis, and other writers, artists and philosophers interested in the intersection of technology, society and culture.[14][15][16]
Cyberia, his first book on cyberculture, was inspired by the San Franciscorave scene of the early 1990s. The initially planned publication was scrapped, however; in Rushkoff's words, "in 1992 Bantam canceled the book because they thought by 1993 the internet would be over."[17] It was eventually published in 1994.
As his books became more accepted, and his concepts of the "media virus"[18] and "social contagion" became mainstream ideas, Rushkoff was invited to deliver commentaries on National Public Radio'sAll Things Considered,[19] and to make documentaries for the PBS seriesFrontline.[20]
In 2002, Rushkoff was awarded theMarshall McLuhan Award by the Media Ecology Association for his bookCoercion, and became a member and sat on theboard of directors of that organization.[21] This allied him with the "media ecologists", a continuation of what is known as the Toronto School of media theorists includingMarshall McLuhan,Walter Ong, andNeil Postman.
Simultaneously, Rushkoff continued to develop his relationship with counterculture figures, collaborating with Genesis P-Orridge as a keyboardist forPsychic TV, and credited with composing music for the albumHell Is Invisible... Heaven Is Her/e.[22] Rushkoff taught classes in media theory and in media subversion for New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program,[23] participated in activist pranks with theYes Men[24] and eToy,[25] contributed to numerous books and documentaries on psychedelics, and spoke or appeared at many events sponsored by counterculture publisher Disinformation.[26]
References to media ecologist and Toronto School of Communication founderMarshall McLuhan appear throughout Rushkoff's work as a focus on media over content, the effects of media onpopular culture and the level at which people participate when consuming media.[27]
Rushkoff worked with both Robert Anton Wilson[28] and Timothy Leary on developing philosophical systems to explain consciousness, its interaction with technology, andsocial evolution of the human species, and references both consistently in his work.Leary, along withJohn Barlow and Terence McKenna characterized the mid-1990s as techno-utopian, and saw the rapid acceleration of culture, emerging media and the unchecked advancement of technology as completely positive.[29]Rushkoff's own unbridled enthusiasm for cyberculture was tempered by the dotcom boom, when the non-profit character of the Internet was rapidly overtaken by corporations andventure capital. Rushkoff often cites two events in particular – the day Netscape became apublic company in 1995,[30] and the day AOL boughtTime Warner in 2000[1] – as pivotal moments in his understanding of the forces at work in the evolution of new media.
Rushkoff spent several years exploringJudaism as a primer formedia literacy, going so far as to publish a book inviting Jews to restore the religion to its "open source" roots.[31] He founded a movement for progressive Judaism called Reboot, but subsequently left when he felt its funders had become more concerned with marketing and publicity of Judaism than its actual improvement and evolution.[27]Disillusioned by the failure of the open source model to challenge entrenched and institutional hierarchies from religion to finance, he became a colleague ofMark Crispin Miller andNaomi Klein, appearing with them atSmith College[32] as well as in numerous documentaries decrying the corporatization of public space and consciousness.[33]He has dedicated himself most recently to the issues of media literacy,[34] participatory government, and the development of local andcomplementary currencies.[35] He wrote a book and film calledLife Inc.,[36] which traces the development ofcorporatism and centralized currency from the Renaissance to today, and hosted aradio show calledThe Media Squat on WFMU from 2008 to 2009, concerned with reclaiming commerce and culture from corporate domination.[37]
In September 2020, Rushkoff commented on the release of the documentaryThe Social Dilemma. This was partly based on the prompting from his fanbase that expressed that the ideas in the film were direct quotations from his books and films. Rushkoff speculated at the possibility that the programmers interviewed in the film have read something from himself, or other writers such asNicholas Carr,Sherry Turkle,Andrew Keen,Howard Rheingold,Richard Barbrook,Tim Wu, or even the singerRaffi. He acknowledged that while their work and analogies are being quoted without acknowledgement of their source, that these quotations serve as memes themselves and are indicative of their sustaining value beyond their original authors.Jaron Lanier, who was a subject in Rushkoff'sCyberia years before, is one of the people included in the documentary. Rushkoff also acknowledged he got a call from the Center for Humane Technology stating that they are starting a new organization calledTeam Humanity, which is a direct wordplay from Rushkoff's podcastTeam Human. Rushkoff asked his fanbase to not act negatively toward this appropriation, and to be inclusive of this new community in order to open up a new dialogue between the groups.[38]
Douglas Rushkoff has served on the board of directors of the Media Ecology Association,[39] The Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics,[40] and is a founding member of Technorealism,[41] as well as of the advisory board of The National Association for Media Literacy Education,[34] MeetUp.com[42] and HyperWords[43]
He is the winner of the first Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity, given by the Media Ecology Association, in 2004.[44]
Douglas Rushkoff's philosophy developed from a techno-utopian view of new media to a more nuanced critique of cyberculture discourse and the impact of media on society. Viewing everything except for intention as media, he frequently explores the themes of how to make media interactive, how to help people (especially children) effectively analyze and question the media they consume, as well as how to cultivate intention and agency. He has theorized on such media as religion, culture, politics, and money.[45]
Up to the late-1990s, Douglas Rushkoff's philosophy towards technology could be characterized as media-deterministic. Cyberculture and new media were supposed to promote democracy and allow people to transcend the ordinary.[46]
InCyberia, Rushkoff states the essence of mid-1990s culture as being the fusion of rave psychedelia,chaos theory and earlycomputer networks. The promise of the resulting "counter culture" was that media would change from being passive to active, that we would embrace the social over content, and that empowers the masses to create and react.[47]
This idea also comes up in the concept of the media virus, which Rushkoff details in the 1994 publication ofMedia Virus: Hidden Agendas in Popular Culture. This significant work adopts organic metaphors to show that media, like viruses, are mobile, easily duplicated and presented as non-threatening.[48] Technologies can make our interaction with media an empowering experience if we learn to decode the capabilities offered to us by our media. Unfortunately, people often stay one step behind our media capabilities. Ideally, emerging media and technologies have the potential to enlighten, to aid grassroots movements, to offer an alternative to the traditional "top-down" media, to connect diverse groups and to promote the sharing of information.[49]
Rushkoff does not limit his writings to the effect of technology on adults, and inPlaying the Future turns his attention to the generation of people growing up who understand the language of media like natives, guarded against coercion.[50] These "screenagers", a term originated by Rushkoff,[51] have the chance to mediate the changing landscape more effectively than digital immigrants.
WithCoercion (1999), Rushkoff realistically examines the potential benefits and dangers inherent in cyberculture and analyzes market strategies that work to make people act on instinct (and buy!) rather than reflect rationally. The book wants readers to learn to "read" the media they consume and interpret what is really being communicated.[citation needed]
InNothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism, Rushkoff explores the medium of religion and intellectually deconstructs the Bible and the ways that he says religion fails to provide true connectivity and transformative experiences.[52]
Most recently, Douglas Rushkoff has turned his critical lens to the medium ofcurrency. One of the most important concepts that he creates and develops is the notion ofsocial currency, or the degree to which certain content and media can facilitate and/or promote relationships and interactions between members of a community. Rushkoff mentions jokes, scandals, blogs, ambiance, i.e. anything that would engender "water cooler" talk, as social currency.
In his book,Life, Inc. and his dissertation "Monopoly Moneys", Rushkoff takes a look at physical currency and the history ofcorporatism. Beginning with an overview of howmoney has been gradually centralized throughout time, and pondering the reasons and consequences of such a fact, he goes on to demonstrate how our society has become defined by and controlled bycorporate culture.
Rushkoff has long been skeptical of social media.[53] On February 25, 2013, he announced in a CNN op-ed that he was leavingFacebook, citing concerns about the company's use of his personal data.[54] In 2023, he announced his departure from X and other social media platforms, explaining, "And Twitter has no tolerance for ambiguity. It's missing the moderated, the emotional, the poetic...the whole human experience."[55]
In his most recent work,Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires (2022), Rushkoff explored the calculus some of the extremely wealthy make in the recognition that their often single-minded pursuit of greater profits and better technology are creating an increasingly unstable world. In a 2022 talk for House of SpeakEasy'sSeriously Entertaining program,[56] Rushkoff explained the billionaires' mindset as coming down to this essential question: "How much money and technology do I need to insulate myself from the reality I'm creating by earning money and using technology in this way?" He argues that treating people better in the present may be the most surefire way to avoid widespread catastrophe in the future.
