Overview

A deep dive into one of this century's most potent questions: do we direct technology, or do we let ourselves be directed by it? This compact new edition of a paradigmatic text packs a big and actionable punch. Updated with a new section on the unique challenges posed by AI, Program or Be Programmed presents a spirited, accessible poetics of new media. On these pages (and screens), Rushkoff picks up where Marshall McLuhan left off, helping readers recognise programming as the new literacy of the digital age. The debate over whether the internet 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 civilisation. Choose the latter, and it could be the last real choice you get to make'. In eleven 'commands', Rushkoff provides cyber-enthusiasts and technophobes alike with the guidelines to navigate this new universe.

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9781682194355

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Reviews

Thinking twice about our use of digital media, what our practices are doing to us, and what we are doing to each other, is one of the most important priorities people have today-and Douglas Rushkoff gives us great guidelines for doing that thinking. Read this before and after you Tweet, Facebook, email or YouTube. -Howard Rheingold 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

Author Information

Named one of the 'world's ten most influential intellectuals' by MIT, Douglas Rushkoff is an author and documentarian who studies human autonomy in a digital age. His twenty other books includeSurvival of the Richest, Team Human, based on his podcast,Present Shock, andThrowing Rocks at the Google Bus. He also made the PBSFrontlinedocumentariesGeneration Like,The Persuaders, andMerchants of Cool. He won the Marshall McLuhan Award, as well as the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity. He is director of the MA program in Media Studies at the City University of New York, Queens College.

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