Program or Be Programmed by Douglas Rushkoff

www.orbooks.com

The debate over whether the Net is good or bad for us fills the airwaves and the blogosphere. But for all the heat of claim and counter-claim, the argument is essentially beside the point: it's here; it's everywhere. The real question is, do we direct technology, or do we let ourselves be directed by it and those who have mastered it? "Choose the former," writes Rushkoff, "and you gain access to the control panel of civilization. Choose the latter, and it could be the last real choice you get to make." In ten chapters, composed of ten "commands" accompanied by original illustrations from comic artist Leland Purvis, Rushkoff provides cyberenthusiasts and technophobes alike with the guidelines to navigate this new universe.

In this spirited, accessible poetics of new media, Rushkoff picks up where Marshall McLuhan left off, helping readers come to recognize programming as the new literacy of the digital age----and as a template through which to see beyond social conventions and power structures that have vexed us for centuries. This is a friendly little book with a big and actionable message.

World-renowned media theorist and counterculture figure Douglas Rushkoff is the originator of ideas such as "viral media," "social currency" and "screenagers." He has been at the forefront of digital society from its beginning, correctly predicting the rise of the net, the dotcom boom and bust, as well as the current financial crisis. He is a familiar voice on NPR, face on PBS, and writer in publications from Discover Magazine to the New York Times.

"Douglas Rushkoff is one of the great thinkers----and writers----of our time."
—Timothy Leary

"Rushkoff is damn smart. As someone who understood the digital revolution faster and better than almost anyone, he shows how the internet is a social transformer that should change the way your business culture operates."
—Walter Isaacson

• Category

  Entertainment

[carnagerpm]

There are only 10 types of people in the world......

[CowboyNinjaD]

I think there's a middle ground where people don't necessarily need to know how to write computer programs, but they should have some basic knowledge of programing, computer hardware, networking, etc. We don't all need to be car mechanics, but everyone who drives should at least be able to change a flat tire or jump start a dead battery.

[r3bol]

People should program. More people in the newer generations will know how to program. People in general will never program unless there is a standard environment (like Java) and they are taught it from primary school as much as they are taught their national language.

[Gladys Regalado]

Just so you know, all of your friends, images, status posts are available for use for people who know how to code. Facebook gives this access to those who use the FB API. So before you willingly submit your data on facebook, you should at least know what they do with your data and who (virtually anyone who knows how to code and uses the API) has access on them.

[Gladys Regalado]

The author emphasized that while we see that FB is helping us to make friends online, we should know that what it actually is doing is monetizing on our relationships. We should not necessarily know how to program but at least know how these programs work.

[Gladys Regalado]

it's not necessarily all about programming, he's telling us that we need to understand how the things we are using work. like Facebook for example, while off-the-bat, "some would say that what does monetizing have anything to do with us learning programming?".

[ThcPatient]

It took a couple thousand years between the dawn of literature and having the majority of people be literate. The current situation with programming is not significantly different.

[MrMadrid691]

... space outside the interference of various institutions. It gives us the oppurtunity to fight back against corporate and government power but we all need to participate in it in order for it to work. Read his book, he persuasively argues why one ought to learn about programming; or at least learn that there is such a thing as programming while uncovering the many biases of digital technologies.

[MrMadrid691]

Social networking sites like Facebook lend power back to the entreprises that dominated TV for the past half-century. Take what is happening with Julian Assange and Wikileaks for example: though they have democratized the journalistic landscape that once belonged to print media, the U.S government and conglomerates like Amazon and Paypal are seeking to pull the plug on it. Programming is a useful skill that enables the ordinary man to participate in a peer-to-peer public...

[EarthRimRoamer21]

What does Facebook's aim of making money off people's relationships have to do with programming? You don't have to know how to build a computer or write a program to notice that! For the average person, learning programming would be a wasted effort. It wouldn't be worth the time and money it took to learn it. It's just not something you need to know.

[cuckooclock1]

... "central nervous system," and, instead, makes us more malleable to marketers and those attempting to monitor, analyse, dissect our moment-to-moment behaviors so as to not only understand us but manipulate us as well. If we do not understand what the technology is for, we are the used instead of users-- that is, we become programmed automatons instead of free agents collectively pursuing the better good for ourselves and the rest of humanity.

[cuckooclock1]

... radio. Both of which are top-down, centalized forms of communication controlled by society's elite. The internet, however, is a bottom-up, decentralized, distributive, interactive, two-way medium that challenges the top-down approach to sharing information. The only problem, as Douglas Rushoff notes, is that this bottom-up technology is becoming centralized and manipulated by cyber conglomarates such as Google, Facebook, and, hell, even Youtube. This, thus, effects the extension of the ...