Synopses & Reviews
Why doesn’t the explosive growth of companies like Facebook and Uber deliver more prosperity for everyone?
What is the systemic problem that sets the rich against the poor and the technologists against everybody else?
When protesters shattered the windows of a bus carrying Google employees to work, their anger may have been justifiable, but it was misdirected. The true conflict of our age isn’t between the unemployed and the digital elite, or even the 99 percent and the 1 percent. Rather, a tornado of technological improvements has spun our economic program out of control, and humanity as a whole—the protesters and the Google employees as well as the shareholders and the executives—are all trapped by the consequences. It’s time to optimize our economy for the human beings it’s supposed to be serving.
In this groundbreaking book, acclaimed media scholar and author Douglas Rushkoff tells us how to combine the best of human nature with the best of modern technology. Tying together disparate threads—big data, the rise of robots and AI, the increasing participation of algorithms in stock market trading, the gig economy, the collapse of the eurozone—Rushkoff provides a critical vocabulary for our economic moment and a nuanced portrait of humans and commerce at a critical crossroads.
Review
"Every great advance begins when someone sees that what everyone else takes for granted may not actually be true. Douglas Rushkoff questions the deepest assumptions of the modern economy and blazes a path toward a more human-centered world." TIM O’REILLY, founder, O’Reilly Media
Review
"A brilliant, bomb-hurling critique of the flaws in our digital economy, identifying what has gone wrong and what can be done about it." Financial Times
Review
"Powerful truth telling…The crux of the argument that Rushkoff makes is that the digital economy is a house of cards built on fictional growth metrics that drive companies to raise money, undercut human workers, sell on the public markets and then—almost inevitably—collapse under the weight of public market demands." Forbes
About the Author
Douglas Rushkoff is a widely known media critic and documentarian. He has written ten books, and his documentaries include Frontline’s award-winning “The Merchants of Cool” and “The Persuaders.” He teaches media studies at the New School, hosts The Media Squat on radio station WFMU, and serves on the board of directors of the Media Ecology Association, the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, and the National Association for Media Literacy Education. He has won the Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology and was the first winner of the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.