From Club Zero-G To A.D.D.
I wrote my first comic, Club Zero-G, as a monthly insert to the rave culture magazine BPM. When the magazine couldn’t afford to continue the series, disinformation came to my rescue, giving me the pages I needed to tell the whole story in a single volume graphic novel, drawn by Steph Dumais. The story was about kids who shared the same dreamspace at night – a giant rave that none of them remember the next day in waking consciousness, except one boy.
That was more than a decade ago, but on the release of my latest graphic novel, A.D.D., I’m coming to realize that I am telling a similar story – this time about a gamer who sees things in the games that others don’t. He’s part of a group of kids raised from birth, or maybe even earlier, to test various forms of media. If they develop special abilities like our hero’s, it is labeled as resistance and steps are taken to neutralize it.
A.D.D. stands for Adolescent Demo Division, but it’s also an obvious reference to the sensory disorder plaguing so many kids today. And while it’s still considered controversial or even dangerous to suggest, I’m hoping we start to consider the role that our “attention economy” may have in the massive increase of diagnoses.
In this short scene, we get a glimpse of our hero, Lionel, and his love…
Douglas Rushkoff On Kicking The Consensus Reality Habit
Doug Rushkoff. Photo by Paul May (CC)
An interview with Douglas Rushkoff via Technoccult:
“When Video Toaster for the Amiga came out everyone was really excited,” he Rushkoff said. “We believed that we could use it to create deeply alternative states of consciousness using lights and colors and things.”
“Today, those technologies are used by companies like Fox News to make you pay attention to what they want you to pay attention to, or to make your eye fall on a particular ad. Stuff like that.”
But he says if you know how the program works, you’re less likely to be hypnotized by it. “There’s two ways to experience magic,” he says. “And I don’t mean stage magic.” You can either experience it as a spectator, watching a priest or guru. Or you can participate. “Having a guru will only take you so far,” he said. “You have to become the guru.”
But it’s not easy.…
Today’s Sermon Is From Douglas Rushkoff
Reverend Billy has declared Douglas Rushkoff to be a Saint of the Church of Earthalujah…
The Demise Of Facebook
Douglas Rushkoff called the impending doom of AOL when it’s hapless merger with Time Warner was announced. Now he says Facebook is cashing out and it’s the beginning of its demise, in an opinion piece at CNN:
All signs for Facebook appear to be pointing up.
Mark Zuckerberg is Time’s Man of the Year, the movie about him seems likely to be an Oscar winner, and now Goldman Sachs is raising $1.5 billion from its favorite investors on behalf of the social networking company.
At the very same moment, Facebook’s only real competitor –NewsCorps’ waning social networking site, MySpace — is shedding employees and expenses, most likely in hopes of a fire sale.
But appearances can be deceiving. In fact, as I read the situation, we are witnessing the beginning of the end of Facebook. These aren’t the symptoms of a company that is winning, but one that is cashing out.
Indeed, 11 years ago…
Harvey Pekar & Doug Rushkoff: How Life Got Incorporated
Two pop culture mainstays, comic book legend Harvey Pekar (RIP) and author/media theorist Doug Rushkoff collaborated on a graphic adaptation of Doug’s book Life Inc: How Corporatism Conquered the World, and How We Can Take It Back for SMITH Magazine as part of the Pekar Project. Part 2 has just been published by SMITH (sample panel below) and if you missed it, you might want to check out Part 1 first. Not to be forgotten, artist Sean Pryor.
Source: SMITH Magazine
Rushkoff: Why Johnny Can’t Program
Doug Rushkoff bemoans the lack of programming in education, at Huffington Post:
Ask any kid what Facebook is for and he’ll tell you it’s there to help him make friends. What else could he think? It’s how he *does* make friends. He has no idea the real purpose of the software, and the people coding it, is to monetize his relationships. He isn’t even aware of those people, the program, or their purpose.
The kids I celebrated in my early books as “digital natives” capable of seeing through all efforts of big media and marketing have actually proven *less* capable of discerning the integrity of the sources they read and the intentions of the programs they use. If they don’t know what the programs they are using are even for, they don’t stand a chance to use them effectively. They are less likely to become power users than the used.
Amazingly, America –…
Rushkoff Says Sell Now
Crowd outside the New York Stock Exchange after the 1929 crash.
Doug Rushkoff, counterculture guru and all-round incredibly smart dude has some worrying advice, just posted on his blog:
Yes, this is really it. The beginning of a true end-of-cycle economically.
If you own “stocks,” use these bounces to get out completely. If you have to park your money somewhere, consider yourself lucky you have money to park.
The object of the game for those who actually have capital is not how to grow it, but how to keep it. Capital has driven our economy since 1300, and the recent bull market was the end of a cycle that began in the mid-1700′s.
The fact that it is ending is not the end of the world at all. It just means that there’s a whole lot of money out there with no place to go. People can’t find a place to park their money because…
First They Came For The Musicians…
Douglas Rushkoff writes of the perils of believing that everything journalistic can be handled effectively by well-meaning amateurs, for Harvard’s Nieman Reports:
First they came for the musicians, and I did not speak out—because I am not a musician. Then they came for the filmmakers, and I did not speak out—because I am not a filmmaker. Then they came for the journalists, and there was no one left to speak out for us.
In a media universe that for so many decades, even centuries, seemed stacked against the amateur, the Internet has made a revolutionary impact. Previously, the only law of physics that seemed to apply to the top-down, corporate-driven media space was that of gravity. King George II, William Randolph Hearst, or even Rupert Murdoch would decide what the public should believe and then print that version of reality. And inventions from the printing press to radio, which once seemed to…
Program Or Be Programmed: Programming Is Our Era’s Equivalent Of Literacy
Fascinating, albeit brief, comments by Doug Rushkoff on his blog. I can’t wait to hear more of his thoughts – I think he’s right, but what does it really mean in practice for those of who who aren’t programmers and are well past college?
I am writing Program or Be Programmed as a book. I will be done soon. Weeks, not months. Recent events in the Facebook and Apple universes have convinced me more than ever that programming is our era’s equivalent of literacy. Whether corporations are controlling the direction of technology, or whether technology is an emergent entity doing this on its own, our only option is to participate in its unfolding by participating in its programming…
Obama recently told a college audience that they’re being distracted by their iPads, and that they need to become aware of who is programming the devices they use. He is right…
…
Program or be Programmed: Douglas Rushkoff’s Ten Commands for a Digital Age
Doug Rushkoff, author of Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back, speaking at SXSW 2010:
Doug Rushkoff on the Book Business (Video)
A glimpse of what Douglas Rushkoff had to say about the future of publishing at Mediabistro’s eBook Summit.
Doug Rushkoff’s New Film, ‘Digital Nation’
Make sure to check out Doug Rushkoff’s new film for PBS (Feb. 2 @ 9 PM or watch it on the PBS site). Here’s what Doug posted on his blog:
Digital Nation – a PBS Frontline documentary I’ve been working on for, gosh, two years now – is finally airing this coming Tuesday evening, Feb 2, at 9pm on pretty much all PBS stations in US. (I know: that’s during the Lost premiere that even Obama feared going up against. But you can Tivo Lost, watch us live, and watch Lost after without the commercials.)
Douglas Rushkoff On Corporations As Uber-Citizens
Long-time friend of disinformation Doug Rushkoff always has great insight on cultural matters. This considered essay following the Supreme Court’s controversial decision last week permitting corporations to finance political parties is one of the best I’ve read so far:
Yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling was positive in one respect: it made law out of what was already happening. While corporations earned “personhood” back in the 1860’s when a court clerk (likely bribed) added this language into the margins of another court decision, they never quite had the rights of citizenship before. They already write our laws (through lobbies) elect our leaders (with money) and create public opinion (with money and PR). If you’re interested in how and why that happened, please read my book Life Inc. But they have always tended to do so by working around government’s efforts to limit their influence.
It was a losing game for a government by the people, of course,…
Douglas Rushkoff’s New Graphic Novel is Entangled with Gaming
In a new interview, Douglas Rushkoff talks about his writing graphic novels based on the universe for the game Exoriare. (”They needed an author to come in and say who lives there…”) To avoid intellectual property disputes, he accepted a small share of the company – but now he worries about future plans for basing characters on actual players in the game!
“The way that some person played this game – is that now their property?”
But he also suggests the reason conspiracy theories seem to be increasing. “I think that people really do sense that machines are doing the majority of the thinking now… When systems break down, people start looking for alternate system”
“I mean, there’s nothing people love more than being controlled, so, if the things that were actually controlling them cease to function, they’re going to create imaginary mechanisms of control, just to maintain that good
feeling of being victimized.”
But he…
Doug Rushkoff’s New Alternate Reality Game
Douglas Rushkoff, longtime friend and collaborator of disinformation, writes about his new videogame Exoriare at BoingBoing:
I’ve written and even taught a whole lot about interactive narrative over the years, but rarely have the chance to play with this stuff. So last year, when a Canadian games company called to see if I’d be interested in collaborating with them on developing stories for a giant, multi-dimensional gaming universe, I jumped. It was like I was being given the chance to live out Jack Kirby’s dream of world-building with Robert Anton Wilson’s vision of multiple and overlapping perspectives.
The early results are finally making it online as the preview of a graphic novel, which spills out into the trailhead of at least one Alternate Reality Game, and also comprises the back story of the coming videogame series. This is a big big universe – a giant war for the future of humanity, of course…
Life, Inc. with Douglas Rushkoff – Disinformation: The Podcast
Disinformation: The Podcast – Life, Inc. with Douglas Rushkoff
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This episode features an interview with author and media wizard Douglas Rushkoff. We discuss his new book, Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back, his work as a media correspondent with the groundbreaking PBS series Frontline, and his long time interest in counter-culture.
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