Tag: Douglas Rushkoff

Listened Breaking With the Speed of the Internet by Written By Team Human from teamhuman.fm

Rushkoff discusses why he’s breaking from the preferred publishing schedules of advertisers and algorithms in favor of a more considerate approach.
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Coming at the problem of social media, algorithms and the internet from the perspective of the creator, Douglas Rushkoff worries about the ever increasing speed and pressures placed by platforms that is creating a “perspective abundance.” He wonders if one of the challenges we face in being more “disciplined” is in choosing not to add our perspective to the mix.

Most ironically, perhaps, the more content we churn out for all of these platforms, the less valuable all of our content becomes. There’s simply too much stuff. The problem isn’t information overload so much as “perspective abundance.” We may need to redefine “discipline” from the ability to write and publish something every day to the ability hold back. What if people started to produce content when they had actually something to say, rather than coming up with something to say in order to fill another slot?

Source: Breaking from the Pace of the Net by Douglas Rushkoff

To me, this touches on Dave White’s idea of “elegant lurking”

The Elegant Lurker can be much more engaged than the noisy contributor and not being visible doesn’t mean you aren’t present.

Source: Elegant Lurking by Dave White

Continuing with his reflection on the challenges of creating, Rushkoff discusses using AI to help him with the creation of a story and wonders if AI is actually taking all the fun stuff?

I was becoming the servant to the AI and the AI was doing the most fun part of the whole process, the actual coming up with the stuff.

Source: Breaking from the Speed of the Net by Douglas Rushkoff

This is something that Scott Stephens and Waleed Aly discuss on The Mindfield podcast, with Stephens worried about what is lost when we no longer spend the time.

Rushkoff then discusses the realisation that maybe the best use of AI is to use the feedback to know where not to write, to know where you have sunk into cliche:

The real value is to use what the AI produced to know how not to write.

 

Liked Doing Less, to Help Ukraine – Douglas Rushkoff – Medium by Douglas Rushkoff (Medium)

In short, it’s okay to sit and stay with the horror that is the war in Ukraine. You don’t have to have an opinion beyond whatever you are feeling right now. The temptation to say more than the obvious is being driven by a media system that profits off this compulsion, and only makes things worse in the process.

Don’t add fuel to that fire.

Bookmarked Plunging Into the Abyss – GEN by Douglas Rushkoff (gen.medium.com)

Those of us back here in reality must work together to enact a Gentle Awakening for our friends and loved ones who have gotten addicted to this video game. There is no man behind the curtain, no secret cabal controlling our destinies, no marvelous or nefarious plan driving Covid, vote counting, or global affairs. They need to awaken to something way way more frightening than politicians eating children: shit just happens, no one is in charge, and chaos reigns. There really is no scapegoat — never was. The only way through is to find ways of coming together, instead.

One step, and one day at a time.

Douglas Rushkoff reflects upon how people of all types and backgrounds are falling under the conspiracy fever. He explains that it is not about the truth, but rather the addiction of finding a missing piece of information in order to receive a hit of endorphin.

What are they addicted to? It’s not the Q myth, Trump, or any particular club or narrative. They’re addicted to staying online and reading and scrolling until they get that little dopamine rush that comes from connecting one dot to another. Fauci-China-Gates-Covid-Epsten…ah! It’s delightful. It makes temporary sense. And then if they post the idea, it gets a few hits and likes and comments from others, and ding ding squirt squirt….another hit of dopamine. And another and another.

This reminds me of Tom Chatfield’s work on social media as a game. It also makes me wonder if there can actually be too many dots?

Bookmarked 12 Steps to Post-Growth Sustainable Business | P2P Foundation (P2P Foundation)

Nobody cares about how we got here. They just want solutions for how to get out of the trap. CEOs are struggling to create value for corporations programmed only to accumulate more capital, drain local economies, and externalize the costs.

So I’ve been ending my talks with specific, actionable suggestions for how companies of all sizes and stages can become more sustainably profitable in the current environment. It amounts to a 12-step program for getting off the addiction to growth. If you need to grow in order to survive, then you’re not a real business – you’re just a brand name on debt.

Here’s the quintessence of the recommendations to be gleaned from hearing my talks, reading my book Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, or listening to my TeamHuman podcast. Of course, if you read the book you’ll see the arguments for why these strategies will work, and how they expose the false assumptions we’ve been working under for a few centuries, now. But here are the basic principles.

Douglas Rushkoff provides a series of steps for moving to a more sustainable business model. This is a useful summary of many of his arguments and ideas from his book Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus:

  1. Optimize for the velocity of money.
  2. Make them rich.
  3. Employ bounded investment strategies.
  4. Push for a tax policy that promotes revenues instead capital gains.
  5. Organize as Platform Cooperatives.
  6. Local crowdfunding.
  7. Develop favor banks and local currencies.
  8. Cooperative businesses cooperate.
  9. Larger companies can enact economic experiments as local, limited trials.
  10. Run your company like a family business.
  11. Develop new metrics for success other than growth.
  12. Your goods and services are your product – not your stock.
Listened Mark Stahlman from shows.acast.com

Playing for Team Human today, founder of the Center for the Study of Digital Life, Mark Stahlman.

Stahlman joins Team Human to discuss how artificial intelligence has become the new ground for human interaction, and why navigating it will require us to retrieve our uniquely human senses. “We will only become fully human if we learn to take responsibility for our actions.” Stahlman says. Further, he discusses the shift from a television environment to a digital environment and what that means for our collective sensibilities.

Mark Stahlman suggests that climate change is a distraction from the real problem, our need to push back on platform capitalism and embrace the digital. This is one of those episodes that requires multiple listens to take in all the ideas.
Replied to

David, my recommendation is Team Human by @rushkoff. There is something about having a book both written and read by the same person.
Replied to Leestijd met Team Human en Coders by Frank Meeuwsen (diggingthedigital.com)

Vandaag kwamen er twee nieuwe boeken binnen waar ik graag in ga beginnen!

I recently finished reading Team Human. Although I should not be surprised, but I found it less about technology (what I have come to expect from Rushkoff) and more about the capacity of humans. In some respects it feels like a modern day book of meditations.

I have started reading Coders. I had read Thompson’s post on women and learning to code, but like yourself bought the book on reputation. Am loving it so far. He really his a knack of telling a story.

Bookmarked Ep. 119 Team Human Live: Douglas Rushkoff and Siobhan O’Connor “Just the Way You Are” by Douglas Rushkoff (Team Human)

In this special live episode of Team Human, Douglas sits in the hot seat, answering questions on what it means to reassert humanity in a digital age.

This was a strange listen as Rushkoff is critical of so many elements of ‘social media’, yet somehow Medium exists outside of that? Although I like Medium’s attempt to pay authors, it is still funded by venture capitalism which makes it susceptible.
Replied to A Slow Start (Austin Kleon’s weekly newsletter)

If you’re interested in songwriting, parenting, or the creative process, I recommend Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy’s memoir, Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back). I listened to him read it on audiobook, which is rare for me. (I don’t have a commute, I like reading with a pencil, I use words all day so I can’t listen to them, and I usually like taking my walks without headphones in.)

Austin, I am intrigued. Did you listen to Tweedy’s memoirs because it was read by him? I find listening to an author read their own work really compelling. For example, I not only love the way Douglas Rushkoff writes, but am grabbed by his prowess as a reader too. Although false, it makes me think I am somehow closer to the truth of the text.
Listened Ep. 117 Book Launch: A Live Team Human Conversation with Douglas Rushkoff and Seth Godin | Team Human from shows.pippa.io

In a role reversal, Douglas Rushkoff is interviewed by Seth Godin on the release of the Team Human manifesto. Douglas reveals the dynamics of this antihuman machinery and invites us to remake these aspects of society in ways that foster our humanity.

Seth Godin and Douglas Rushkoff discuss why ‘team human’. They address how we got to now, the challenges that we face in being human, the hope for the future and whether it matters that ‘NPR’ does not care.

I purchased the book and corresponding audiobook. I loved Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus and Programming or be Programmed. I have also enjoyed the podcast. I also enjoy listening to Rushkoff read his own work.

Watched Team Human: The TED Talk is posted – Rushkoff from Rushkoff

I got to do a real TED talk and they just posted it. Check out the Team Human manifesto, presented in ten minutes!   Want more? Catch up on over 100 episodes of the Team Human Podcast at teamhuman.fm And order  the new book, Team Human here.

Liked Universal Basic Income Is Silicon Valley’s Latest Scam by Douglas Rushkoff (Medium)

Under the guise of compassion, UBI really just turns us from stakeholders or even citizens to mere consumers. Once the ability to create or exchange value is stripped from us, all we can do with every consumptive act is deliver more power to people who can finally, without any exaggeration, be called our corporate overlords.

No, income is nothing but a booby prize. If we’re going to get a handout, we should demand not an allowance but assets. That’s right: an ownership stake.

Listened Ep. 109 “A Pirate Bay of Knowledge?” by Jason Schmitt, Douglas Rushkoff from Team Human

Playing for Team Human today: Jason Schmitt. Jason looks at the big business of for-profit academic publishing in his new documentary Paywall:The Business of Scholarship. Should the the world’s research be locked behind closed doors? Jason makes the case for open access on today’s Team Human.

Jason Schmitt and Douglas Rushkoff discuss the way in which knowledge and scholarship has become locked behind paywalls. The irony of this is that so many of the articles and journals published are written by academics who get little gain out of the time and effort they put in. Schmitt and Rushkoff touch on the open-access work of Aaron Swartz and Alexandra Elbakyan. It is an interesting discussion in a world where many are arguing for more research, yet so much of this research is inaccessible. I remember Karl Trsek, my history teacher in high school, telling me that he continued to maintain a subscription with the university library. I did not understand why this was so important, but now more that ever this is the only means of gaining any sort of access.
Bookmarked Survival of the Richest – Future Human – Medium by douglas rushkoff (Medium)

At least as far as these gentlemen were concerned, this was a talk about the future of technology. Taking their cue from Elon Musk colonizing Mars, Peter Thiel reversing the aging process, or Sam Altman and Ray Kurzweil uploading their minds into supercomputers, they were preparing for a digital future that had a whole lot less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether and insulating themselves from a very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is really about just one thing: escape.

Douglas Rushkoff reflections on the desire of some in technology to escape the world. This touches on the notion of technology as a system. In closing he suggests that the answer is stop worrying about how you might inoculate yourself against tomorrow, but start building relationships today in part so tomorrow does not occur.
Bookmarked Team Human: Don’t have to look like a refugee – Rushkoff (Rushkoff)

Forget the reality — that Mexicans are actually emigrating from the US back to Mexico: there’s a net decrease. That more immigrants come from China and India than the south. The only way to understand the Trump administration’s proposed wall is as a safety play for global warming. Instead of admitting there’s an environmental crisis underway and reducing carbon emissions, just accept the inevitable climate crisis, and barricade the nation from the inevitable flow of refugees from the south. Whatever we’re doing now is simply priming the American public for the inhumanity to come.

Douglas Rushkoff reflects on the current crisis involving children been taken off their parents. He suggests that it is less about politics (or the Bible), and more about propaganda with the creation of dehumanising images of children in cages. Rushkoff’s answer is to focus on the intimacy of the sounds.

Bill Fitzgerald wonders how much of this will be spoken about at ISTE? It can be easy to think, ‘that is America’, but Australia is no better. Whether it be the stolen generation or detention centres, Australia has had its own examples of abuse.

Listened Ep. 79 Suzanne Slomin “Feeding A Living Culture” from teamhuman.fm

Playing for Team Human today is Suzanne Slomin, founder of Green Rabbit a small solar powered bakery located in the Mad River Valley of Vermont specializing in naturally leavened breads.Suzanne wi

In the introduction, Douglas Rushkoff reflections on the blockchain. This is in contrast to the usual hype. Rushkoff questions what happens when the incentive of mining bitcoin has gone? We are then back to the traditional banking structure where we are dependent on some sort entity to provide a subscription service.

For the feature, Rushkoff talks with Suzanne Slomin about baking bread. This is an insightful conversation. It reminds me of a similar conversation on the Eat This podcast. One of the aspects that stood out was the Slomin’s discussion of her use of living culture as opposed to industrial yeast. She describes how she has to regularly feed it or else it turns in on itself. This is a fantastic metaphor for change.

Listened Ep. 76 Live From Gray Area Foundation for the Arts Pt.2: Howard Rheingold by Douglas Rushkoff from teamhuman.fm

This week we continue with part two of our special live recording of Team Human at Gray Area Foundation for the Arts in San Fransisco. Joining Douglas on stage is cyberculture pioneer, educator, artist, author, visionary, and shoe painter, Howard Rheingold.

Howard Rheingold and Douglas Rushkoff discuss the evolution of technology from a collision between military and psychedelic culture. Rheingold discusses his optimism and belief in technology to amplify possibilities. In particular, he shares his interest in Patreon to develop shared publics. Rheingold’s ethos is captured by the following quote:

The secret to happiness is having appropriate expectations.

We still have some painful contradictions that we need to work out. The question is not about how good the technology is, but how it is distributed.

Listened Ep. 75 Live From San Francisco at Gray Area Foundation for the Arts Pt.1: Annalee Newitz | Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff from Team Human

If you have slavery in any part of your culture, the entire culture is infected by it.

In this conversation between Annalee Newitz and Douglas Rushkoff, they talk about robots, ethics, autonomy, slavery, gender and cats.
Listened Ep. 74 Damien Williams from shows.pippa.io

Technology philosopher Damien Williams on how the algorithms running society are embedded with the same biases as the people who program them.

Douglas Rushkoff and Damien Williams discuss the biases that we build into our technology through their design and the problems that this creates for machine learning. In some respects, this touches on the work of Cathy O’Neil.

Rushkoff also begins with a reflection on the use of social media by schools. He wonders why is it so easy for people to losesight of the design and purpose behind these platforms? He argues that other than teaching media, social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc) should never be used by schools. Use blogs or a space you manage yourself and your story – something that I have touched upon in the past – but to feed the ad algorithms is the wrong approach.