Quote

The outsourcing of our memory to machines expands the amount of data to which we have access, but degrades our brain’s own ability to remember things.

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
Amount
Outsourcing
Memories
Degrades
Brain
Expands
Ability
Degrade
Remember
Data
Things
Access
Machines
Memory

More quotes by Douglas Rushkoff

Image
I feel like the smartest people in my field are busy reinforcing the old models with new technology.
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
In the industrial age and in analog clocks, a minute is some portion of an hour which is some portion of a day. You know, in the digital age, a minute is just a number. It's just 3:23. It's almost this absolute duration that doesn't have a connection to where the sun is or where our day is.
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
In spite of my own reservations about Bing's ability to convert Google users, I have to admit that the search engine does offer a genuine alternative to Google-style browsing, a more coherently organized selection of links, and a more advertiser-friendly environment through which to sell space and links.
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
Whether it's watching a $4,000 laptop fall off the conveyor belt at airport security, contending with a software conflict that corrupted your file management system, or begging your family to stop opening those virus-carrying 'greeting cards' attached to emails, all computer owners are highly leveraged and highly vulnerable technology investors.
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
Like the diminishing beauty returns for a facially paralyzed Botox addict, the more forcefully we attempt to stop the passage of time, the less available we are to the very moment we seek to preserve.
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
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.
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
Most Internet business theorists are really looking at preserving the necks of giant, Fortune 500 companies, rather than promoting the digital, peer-to-peer economy that actually wants to happen.
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
If the clockwork universe equated the human body with the mechanics of the clock, the digital universe now equates human consciousness with the processing of the computer. We joke that things don't compute, that we need a reboot, or that our memory has been wiped.
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
Most simply, 'present shock' is the human response to living in a world that's always on real time and simultaneous. You know, in some ways it's the impact of living in a digital environment, and in other ways it's just really what happens when you stop leaning so forward to the millennium and you finally arrive there.
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
The cloud is still really just a bunch of servers, owned by someone or something, whose decisions and competence must be trusted. This applies to everything from Google Docs to Gmail: Putting our data out there really means putting it 'out there.'
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
Children are being adultified because our economy is depending on them to make purchasing decisions. So they're essentially the victims of a marketing and capitalist machine gone awry.
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
Computers don't kill books people do.
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
Overwinding happens when hedge funds destroy companies by attempting to leverage derivatives against otherwise productive long-term assets.
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
I went to Cal Arts and AFI, and I worked on 'Bonfire Of The Vanities.' I got this grant from the Academy to be Brian De Palma's apprentice director. And it was such a harrowing, disillusioning, awful experience.
Douglas Rushkoff
Image
Your email inbox is a bit like a Las Vegas roulette machine. You know, you just check it and check it, and every once in a while there's some juicy little tidbit of reward, like the three quarters that pop down on a one-armed bandit. And that keeps you coming back for more.
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
Corporations [gained] direct access to what we may think of as our humanity, emotions, and agency but, in this context, are really just buttons.
Douglas Rushkoff