Present Shock Economies
Filmed on October 23, 2014, at “Gain: AIGA Design and Business Conference”
About this video
We often see digital technology as a new tool through which to apply the same old industrialism. Last time machines replaced humans. This time it’s robots. Last time monopolies killed the bazaar. This time monopoly platforms have killed the peer-to-peer marketplace. Instead of enhancing and rethinking the role the value or the welfare of human beings we further the dehumanizing agenda of industrialism. In this conversation Rushkoff lays the groundwork for how we can reboot the economy for a digital environment.
Speaker bio
Winner of the Media Ecology Association’s first Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity Dr. Douglas Rushkoff is an author teacher and documentarian who focuses on the ways people cultures and institutions create share and influence each other’s values. His new book Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now (2013) explores the always-on simultaneous society in which we live. His previous bestselling books on media and popular culture have been translated into more than 30 languages. They include Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age (2010) Media Virus (1996) the novel Ecstasy Club (1997) and the graphic novel A.D.D. (2012).
Rushkoff has written and hosted three award-winning PBS Frontline documentaries including The Merchants of Cool which looks at the influence of corporations on youth culture The Persuaders about the cluttered landscape of marketing and new efforts to overcome consumer resistance and Digital Nation about life on the virtual frontier. Most recently he made Generation Like an exploration of teens marketers and social media. His commentaries have aired on CBS Sunday Morning and NPR’s All Things Considered and have been published inThe New York Times and Time magazine. He regularly appears on TV shows including NBC Nightly News Larry King Live and The Colbert Report.
Rushkoff has taught for New York University’s interactive telecommunications program The New School Maybe Logic Academy and the Esalen Institute. He has also served as an advisor to the United Nations Commission on World Culture. Rushkoff earned his Ph.D. in new media and digital culture from Utrecht University and graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University. He received an M.F.A. in directing from California Institute of the Arts and completed a post-graduate fellowship at The American Film Institute.
