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On Facebook, your past comes into your present when someone from your second grade class suddenly pops up to send you a message, and your future is being manipulated by what Facebook knows to put in front of you next.

Douglas Rushkoff

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Douglas Rushkoff
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: February 18
Journalist
Writer
New York City
New York
Class
Send
Future
Message
Comes
Suddenly
Next
Messages
Someone
Fronts
Manipulated
Past
Front
Grade
Second
Grades
Present
Pops

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Computers don't kill books people do.
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Apple enjoys 'Harry Potter'-like adoration and queues because it sells physical objects, limited by the pace of assembly lines in China. To own is to have, to have is to hold, and to hold is to show off.
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The competitive advantage professional journalism enjoys over the free is just that: professional journalists, whose paid positions give them the time and resources they need to commit more fully to the task. If we can't do better, so be it.
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Everyone knows, or should know, that everything we type on our computers or say into our cell phones is being disseminated throughout the datasphere. And most of it is recorded and parsed by big data servers. Why do you think Gmail and Facebook are free? You think they're corporate gifts? We pay with our data.
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We've been taught that the renaissance was one of the great golden ages of civilisation. The renaissance was not a golden age, it was the end of a golden age.
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The early cyberpunk idea was that networked computers would let us do our work at home, as freelancers, and then transact directly with peers over networks. Digital technology would create tremendous slack, allow us to apply its asynchronous, decentralized qualities to our own work and lives.
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Narrative Collapse is what happens when we no longer have time in which to tell a story. Remote controls and DVRs give us the ability to break down narratives - particularly the more abusive ones. This is a great thing for escaping the 'ends-justify-the-means' traps of 20th-century wars and religions, but it can also make it hard to convey values.
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I don't think tablets are where we should be focused. But I do think they could end up being an efficient way of delivering textbooks. They're just not really that, yet. There's all sorts of poisons and mined minerals and carnage that goes on to make a tablet. Way more than to print a book. Or a bunch of books.
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Overwinding happens when hedge funds destroy companies by attempting to leverage derivatives against otherwise productive long-term assets.
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Like most early enthusiasts, I always thought the way the Internet encouraged multitasking made users less vulnerable to manipulation, while simultaneously exploiting even more of our brain's capacity than before. Apparently not.
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Social media is itself as temporary as any social gathering, nightclub or party. It's the people that matter, not the venue. So when the trend leaders of one social niche or another decide the place everyone is socializing has lost its luster or, more important, its exclusivity, they move on to the next one, taking their followers with them.
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The 'looking forward' so prevalent in the late 1990s was bound to end once the new millennium began. Like some others of that era, I predicted a new focus on the moment, on real experience, and on what things are actually worth right now. Then 9/11 magnified this sensibility, forcing America as a nation to contend with its own impermanence.
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I don't want to sound like some old person pining for how things used to be, because I'm not. But walking down the street, for example, used to be a public activity you'd see the other people.
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The new Zune may not be an iPod killer, but it does offer a clean interface, great industrial design, HD radio, and a subscription model for music, making it significantly less expensive for big users.
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Jobs, as such, are a relatively new concept. People may have always worked, but until the advent of the corporation in the early Renaissance, most people just worked for themselves. They made shoes, plucked chickens, or created value in some way for other people, who then traded or paid for those goods and services.
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The hours Facebook users put into their profiles and lists and updates is the labor that Facebook then sells to the market researchers and advertisers it serves.
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In the emerging, highly programmed landscape ahead, you will either create the software or you will be the software. It's really that simple: Program, or be programmed. Choose the former, and you gain access to the control panel of civilization. Choose the latter, and it could be the last real choice you get to make.
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