Quote

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.

Douglas Rushkoff

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Douglas Rushkoff
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: February 18
Journalist
Writer
New York City
New York
Choices
Access
Software
Lasts
Program
Highly
Last
Civilization
Latter
Simple
Choice
Landscape
Real
Choose
Gain
Really
Control
Former
Panel
Make
Either
Ahead
Programmed
Create
Gains
Emerging

More quotes by Douglas Rushkoff

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The tribal community lived in the totality of circular time the farmers of God's universe understood before and after workers of the clockwork universe lived by the tick and we creatures of the digital era must relate to the pulse.
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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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Microsoft's new OS, Windows 7, may finally be a worthy successor to XP, eliminating the clutter of Vista and letting users get to what they want to use without the fuss. All this, while remaining compatible with their IT departments' demands for scalability and custom implementations.
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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
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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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Overwinding happens when hedge funds destroy companies by attempting to leverage derivatives against otherwise productive long-term assets.
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We are looking at a society increasingly dependent on machines, yet decreasingly capable of making or even using them effectively.
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Once a teen has been identified as part of the 'target market,' he knows he's done for. The object of the game is to confound the marketers, and keep one's own, authentic culture from showing up at the shopping mall as a prepackaged corporate product.
Douglas Rushkoff
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We each create a story - a narritive, a picture, an allegory, a model - for what's going on in the universe. And then we fight - sometimes to the death - to make others believe in that model, or to be able to keep believing in it ourselves. In other words, we try to erase contradictory evidence to that model.
Douglas Rushkoff
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Everything we do in the digital realm - from surfing the Web to sending an e-mail to conducting a credit card transaction to, yes, making a phone call - creates a data trail. And if that trail exists, chances are someone is using it - or will be soon enough.
Douglas Rushkoff
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Just as infinite access to free music ultimately leads to no one making a living at music anymore, free journalism just doesn't pay for itself - particularly not when a search engine is serving all the ads.
Douglas Rushkoff
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Digital media are biased toward replication and storage. Our digital photos practically upload and post themselves on Facebook, and our most deleted e-mails tend to resurface when we least expect it. Yes, everything you do in the digital realm may as well be broadcast on prime-time television and chiseled on the side of the Parthenon.
Douglas Rushkoff
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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.
Douglas Rushkoff
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I feel like Hollywood would rather end the emerging, bottom-up creative culture than let it happen.
Douglas Rushkoff
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Computers don't kill books people do.
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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
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Marketers spend millions developing strategies to identify children's predilections and then capitalize on their vulnerabilities. Young people are fooled for a while, but then develop defense mechanisms, such as media-savvy attitudes or ironic dispositions. Then marketers research these defenses, develop new countermeasures, and on it goes.
Douglas Rushkoff
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Many billboards and magazine ads have resorted to showing isolated body parts rather than full-body portraits of models using or wearing products. This style of photography, known in the industry as abstract representation, allows the viewer to see himself in the advertisement, rather than the model.
Douglas Rushkoff
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Grunge was so self-consciously lowbrow and nonaspirational that it seemed, at first, impervious to the hype and glamour normally applied swiftly to any emerging trend. But sure enough, grunge anthems found their way onto the soundtracks of television commercials, and Dodge Neons were hawked by kids in flannel shirts saying, 'Whatever.'
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By turning every Yahoo search box into a Bing box, Microsoft may have bought itself the exposure it needs to be the next Google.
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