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Summary
Summary
In San Francisco in 2013 activists protesting against the gentrification of their city smashed the windows of a bus carrying Google employees to work. But these protests weren't just a question of the activists versus the Googlers, or even the 99 per cent versus the 1 per cent. Rather they were symptomatic of the true conflict of our age, between humanity as a whole and a digital economy in which boundless growth is valued above all else.
In this groundbreaking book, Douglas Rushkoff - named one of the world's ten most influential thinkers by MIT - lays out a ground plan for a different economic and social future. Ranging from big data to the rise of robots, from the gig economy to the collapse of the eurozone, Rushkoff shows how we can combine the best of human nature with the best of modern technology to achieve a state of sustainable, distributed wealth.
It's time the economy finally worked for the human beings it's supposed to serve.
Author Notes
Douglas Rushkoff was born on February 18, 1961. After graduating from Princeton University he received an MFA in Directing from California Institute of the Arts.
He has written numerous magazine columns on topics including cyberculture and has been aired on CBS Sunday Morning and NPR's All Things Considered and published in The New York Times and Time magazine.
Rushkoff has taught at the MaybeLogic Academy, NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, and the Esalen Institute, and he teaches media studies at the New School University. Rushkoff lectures around the world about media, art, society, and change at conferences and universities. He consults to museums, governments, synagogues, churches, universities, and companies on new media arts and ethics.
Rushkoff won the first Neil Postman award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity. He is on the Boards of the Media Ecology Association, The Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, Technorealism, The National Association for Media Literacy Education, MeetUp.com, and Hyperwords.
His bestselling books include graphic novels, Cyberia, Media Virus, Playing the Future, Nothing Sacred: The Truth about Judaism, Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out, Coercion, and Life Inc.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
This interesting, thoughtful dissection of the modern digital economy and its shortcomings starts off with a clarion call. Rushkoff, a digital futurist turned critic, believes the speed and scale of digital commerce and corporate expansion since the 1990s is a "growth trap" that could "derail not only the innovative capacity of our industries, but also the sustainability of our entire society." He may be right, and he is cogent and clear about Silicon Valley's accepted trajectory for startups: seek massive amounts of capital and win a monopoly position to dominate the competition. But Rushkoff's critique-that the scale of digital economics is propelling modern capitalism into an unsustainable state-dwarfs his prescriptive remedies. The book's calls for more peer-oriented companies, "inclusive capitalism," and alternative models such as the mission-driven "benefit corporation," seem inadequate to the challenge of replacing the system described here. Calling for a rejection of the winner-takes-all, zero-sum-game approach is a reasonable response to current economic developments, yet Rushkoff has done this in a way that is interesting without being truly compelling. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Welcome to the futurists' game of guess where we're headed, as Rushkoff (Present Shock, 2013) opines about what the world needs to be in terms of commerce. Rushkoff's position: For the sake of humanity literally and figuratively we must embrace the idea of distributed wealth and forsake business growth in the name of prosperity for many. Though he's not necessarily influenced by the recent reports of drastic decline in middle-class numbers, he is rather resolute in his insistence on transforming five segments of the marketplace: employment, corporate growth goals, currencies, investment, and distribution. For each, a long narrative sets the stage, followed by a handful of strong recommendations. Take employment, for instance. Rushkoff suggests four strategies: reducing the 40-hour workweek, employee-company sharing of productivity goals (and results), guaranteeing minimum incomes, and getting paid to address real needs. Is all of this just nirvana or realistic? He points out enough examples to make us quasi-believers, from Unilever and B corporations to bitcoin.--Jacobs, Barbara Copyright 2016 Booklist