Douglas Rushkoff
Media theorist and writer; author of Program or Be Programmed and Team Human, and host of the Team Human podcast.
Douglas Rushkoff did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Our reading
Their wordsIt's all so counterintuitive, but that's only because money and people are actually at odds.
↗Douglas Rushkoffrushkoff.substack.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Our reading
Central currency is designed to preserve wealth and entrench power rather than promote exchange.
Their wordsCentral currency, our money, has always been about preservation of wealth, entrenchment of power, going up the pyramid, and staying there.
↗Douglas Rushkoffrushkoff.substack.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsIn order for AI companies to make money, we turn physical matter, human labor, and cognition itself, into tokens - while robbing the world of resources, people of liberty, and humanity of thought.
↗Douglas Rushkoffrushkoff.substack.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 8 weeks earlier
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Their wordsAny system of thought that subordinates living people to a hypothetical future has already committed the foundational moral error.
↗Douglas Rushkoffrushkoff.substack.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsThe quality of a civilization is measured not by the size of its towers, but by the way people treat one another, and whether they can recognize other people as faces, not functions.
↗Douglas Rushkoffrushkoff.substack.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 3 months earlier
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Their wordsI want to be so bold as to assert that this shamanic/somatic awareness I'm describing here is the natural state. It's not officially spiritual or religious. It's not made up of symbols or superstitions. It's a level before that, below that. It's pre-linguistic, and pre-symbolic.
↗Douglas Rushkoffrushkoff.substack.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsOur AI-driven world is a pseudo-reality. A symbol system based on a symbol system based on a symbol system. Predictions based on written language based on mouth noises. Or opportunity, based on agency, based on worth, based on jobs, based on corporatism, based on interest-bearing currency.
↗Douglas Rushkoffrushkoff.substack.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsOur modern technologized world is a symbol system we learn about in school so we can navigate or manipulate it as adults. We learn the street names instead of the terrain, value job titles instead of the social contributions, and pursue growth over wellness.
↗Douglas Rushkoffrushkoff.substack.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 10 days earlier
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Our reading
The potential creative output of AI might outweigh its destructive environmental and social costs.
Their wordsCould the destructive impact of using AI ever be outweighed by the creative output?
↗Douglas Rushkoffrushkoff.substack.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Our reading
The primary threat is not rogue AI, but rogue political leaders and tech billionaires using AI.
Their wordsI'm less afraid of a rogue AI than I am a rogue president or a dozen rogue tech billionaires using AI.
↗Douglas Rushkoffrushkoff.substack.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsIn a lot of ways, this feels like the internet in 1994, before it became AOL and then Facebook, when it was still driven by a counterculture looking to expand the collective human imagination.
↗Douglas Rushkoffrushkoff.substack.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 5 weeks earlier
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Their wordsThe spiritual impulses informing Judaism are not bad or destined for violence and self-destructive behavior. But they are not of our era and may be obsolete.
↗Douglas Rushkoffrushkoff.substack.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Our reading
The age of the book is ending as the primary media environment for human growth and operation.
Their wordsThe age of the book-and I say this as someone who has made my career as an author-the age of the book is ending. Text and books no longer define the media environment in which human beings grow up and operate.
↗Douglas Rushkoffrushkoff.substack.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Our reading
AI suggests the dawn of a new media age defined by all-at-onceness rather than linearity.
Their wordsWhile I'm not yet convinced of AI's enduring value to humanity or the planet, at the very least it suggests we are at the dawn of a new media age. One defined less by the linearity of the book, than the all-at-onceness of perfect recall.
↗Douglas Rushkoffrushkoff.substack.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 11 days earlier
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Their wordsAs I've been writing for years, not only are digital media technologies threatening to consume the planet's resources, but they form the environment of propaganda in which the current course is made to appear all-but-inevitable.
↗Douglas Rushkoffrushkoff.substack.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsDemocracy is not a frictionless, universal phenomenon, but a high-friction, interpersonal, local phenomenon.
↗Douglas Rushkoffrushkoff.substack.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Our reading
Growth-based capitalism is like a computer program with a resource leak that cannot run forever.
Their wordsLike the Club of Rome explained in the 1970s, the game we're playing is taking up more resources than can be regenerated by the real world. It's a clever game, this growth-based capitalism thing, but it can't be left running forever.
↗Douglas Rushkoffrushkoff.substack.com 3rd of 3 in this piece