Quote

Computers don't kill books people do.

Douglas Rushkoff

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Douglas Rushkoff
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: February 18
Journalist
Writer
New York City
New York
Book
People
Computers
Kill
Computer
Books

More quotes by Douglas Rushkoff

Image
Online advertising may not be much more successful than an old double-barrel, but - like a good spray of buckshot - it makes up for its lack of accuracy with sheer volume. There are 10 unique ads listed with every Gmail message in your queue, each tied to the message content. And a paying sponsor.
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
As a professional journalist who nonetheless champions a 'people's' Internet, I am happy to compete against the thousands of amateur bloggers out there reporting and commenting on the same stories I do.
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
Our technologies become more complex while we become more simple. They learn about us while we come to know less and less about them. No one person can understand everything going on in an iPhone, much less pervasive systems.
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
With the DVR, I was mostly writing about it as a good thing in giving us the choice of when and how to watch things. But there's what we lose in the bargain, which is the collective spectacle. 'Did you see Jay Leno last night?'
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
Digital technology is both arousing and distancing. We don't look at the users on the other side as people. They aren't - they're just usernames, Facebook photos and Twitter handles.
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
I feel like the smartest people in my field are busy reinforcing the old models with new technology.
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
We Facebook users have been building a treasure lode of big data that government and corporate researchers have been mining to predict and influence what we buy and for whom we vote. We have been handing over to them vast quantities of information about ourselves and our friends, loved ones and acquaintances.
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
It's not that MySpace lost and Facebook won. It's that MySpace won first, and Facebook won next. They'll go down in the same order.
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
Unlike the Tea Party, who see themselves as the customers of government, people in the Occupy Wall Street movement understand that we are the government. Stated most simply, we are trying to run a 21st-century society on a 13th-century economic operating system. It just doesn't work.
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
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.
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
Ecstacy stripped away the user's inhibitions to self-expression. On E, lies are inefficient, and the peculiarities or weaknesses they are meant to obscure no longer seem like offenses against nature.
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
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.
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
Part of an icon's power comes from its indivisibility. The swoosh cannot be further deconstructed into its component parts. Just as golden arches mean McDonald's, and the little red tab means Levi's, the swoosh is Nike. The product is its icon, inseparably and without exception. To buy a pair of Nike shoes is to buy the Nike swoosh.
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
Facebook has never been merely a social platform. Rather, it exploits our social interactions the way a Tupperware party does. Facebook does not exist to help us make friends, but to turn our network of connections, brand preferences and activities over time - our 'social graphs' - into money for others.
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
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.
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
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.
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
The plague did not lead to Europe’s economic collapse. Rather, Europe’s currency-driven economic collapse led to the plague.
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
Google is in a position where it doesn't even have to strive to become a hip, conscious choice. Brands are temporary fads. Functionality is forever. Google just has to 'be,' and everyone will end up there sooner or later.
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
Most of us still haven't grasped the fact that everything we commit to the digital space - not just our public blogs and broadcast tweets, but every private text message, email, and voicemail is likely to be stored and accessible. Forever.
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
The moment you frame your own awareness within a second level of self -consciousness is the moment your mind is most up for grabs. ... You're safe because you have an ironic distance from the coercive techniques I'm employing. All of them that is, except this one. Are you on your guard yet? Does it feel good? Of course not.
Douglas Rushkoff