La storia di questo libro inizia il giorno in cui Douglas Rushkoff, noto studioso e popolare divulgatore sui temi dell'innovazione e dell'hi-tech, riceve un singolare invito: in cambio di un'ingente somma, dovrà raggiungere una località segreta nel deserto e qui fornire una consulenza a cinque delle persone più ricche del pianeta, che intendono verificare la bontà dei diversi piani di fuga da loro elaborati in vista di quello che chiamano l'Evento - la catastrofe di natura incerta ma che, ne sono sicuri, sta per abbattersi sul nostro pianeta. Sembra un film, ma è tutto vero. Del resto, se i multimilionari non si curano degli allarmi della comunità scientifica rispetto alla crisi ambientale né intendono ripensare una corsa indiscriminata al profitto divenuta ormai insostenibile è proprio perché, da lungo tempo, stanno progettando di fuggire al momento opportuno, lasciandoci qui, in un mondo divenuto invivibile. Che si tratti di una catastrofe climatica, di un meteorite che si abbatte sul pianeta o di un'esplosione nucleare, gli ultraricchi hanno già costruito esclusivi bunker sotterranei - resort in località remote e protette - e astronavi pronte a partire per Marte - a bordo delle quali, naturalmente, nessuno di noi sarà ammesso. Tanto appassionante quanto sconvolgente, Solo i più ricchi racconta una storia incredibile ma vera e ricostruisce ciò che l'autore definisce il Mindset - quel particolare atteggiamento mentale diffuso tra i 'vincenti' che li ha convinti di essere molto al di sopra dei comuni mortali e di potersi impunemente sbarazzare dello stesso mondo che hanno c

Iconografia e misticismo si intrecciano nella tela tessuta dal teorico dei media Douglas Rushkoff, che dipana davanti agli occhi del lettore uno dei misteri più appassionanti del XX secolo: la connessione tra nazismo e poteri occulti. Durante la seconda guerra mondiale, il leggendario occultista Aleister Crowley progetta una nuova pericolosissima arma da testare contro le potenze dell'Asse, ma un conflitto combattuto con armi tanto potenti rischierebbe di generare l'Apocalisse. Con un'introduzione di Grant Morrison, un fumetto capace di alterare la vostra percezione della realtà.

Come abbiamo trasformato le tecnologie digitali in acceleratori di una crescita sorda ai bisogni della società? Da questa e altre domande Douglas Rushkoff fa emergere l'indagine inTeam Human: un manifesto per il 21esimo secolo, composto da una raccolta di cento pensieri sul rapporto tra uomo, tecnologia, economia e digitale. Secondo Rushkoff c'è una corrente sotterranea che usa la tecnologia per ottimizzare gli esseri umani per il mercato, occorre portarla alla luce e iniziare invece a ottimizzare la tecnologia per il nostro futuro.Team Human rappresenta quindi un invito all'azione per ripensare l'uomo come abilitatore e includere i valori umani, che corriamo il rischio di dare per scontati, all'interno dell'infrastruttura tecnologica. Occorre superare questo tech-clashproprio a partire dal concetto di collaborazione. Rushkoff aggiunge quindi qualcosa di nuovo al dibattito su uomo e digitale, qualcosa che ci ha sempre caratterizzati nella storia: il bisogno di fare squadra, perché l'essere umano è un team e l'evoluzione è un atto collaborativo. L'invito è il seguente: unisciti, non sei solo.

The Adolescent Demo Division are the world's luckiest teen gamers. Raised from birth to test media, appear on reality TV and enjoy the fruits of corporate culture, the squad develop special abilities that make them the envy of the world--and a grave concern to their keepers.

One by one, they 'graduate' to new levels that are not what they seem. But their heightened abilities can only take them so far as the ultimate search for their birth families leads to an inconceivably harrowing discovery.

Written by Douglas Rushkoff, world-renowned media theorist, Frontline TV correspondent and author (Ecstasy Club, Media Virus and Program or Be Programmed, TESTAMENT), with full color art by Goran Sudzuka and Jose Marzan Jr. (Y: THE LAST MAN).

I manifestanti che hanno mandato in frantumi i finestrini di un autobus di Google carico di dipendenti erano animati da una rabbia comprensibile, ma male indirizzata. Il vero conflitto della nostra epoca non è quello tra disoccupati ed élite digitale, e neppure tra il 99 e l'1 per cento. La realtà è che il nostro programma economico è stato risucchiato in un vortice di innovazioni tecnologiche sfuggendo così al controllo; l'intera umanità - i manifestanti e i dipendenti di Google, così come gli azionisti e i dirigenti - è in questa trappola e ne paga le conseguenze. È ora di revisionare la nostra economia, per metterla al servizio degli esseri umani. In questo libro sorprendente, il celebre mediologo e autore Douglas Rushkoff ci spiega come possiamo combinare il meglio della natura umana con il meglio della moderna tecnologia. Intrecciando fili apparentemente molto diversi - i big data, l'ascesa dei robot e dell'intelligenza artificiale, il ruolo crescente degli algoritmi negli scambi azionari, la gig economy, il collasso dell'eurozona e il risorgere dei nazionalismi - Rushkoff ci offre un ritratto variegato di un mondo di uomini e commerci giunto a un crocevia fondamentale, e ci indica una possibile via d'uscita.

Capital in the Twenty-First Century meets The Second Machine Agein this stunning and optimistic tour de force on the promise and peril of the digital economy, from one of the most brilliant social critics of our time.

The digital economy was supposed to create a new age of prosperity. But so far it has only exacerbated the worst excesses of capitalism: the gap between winners and losers gets more extreme as the 1% extract more value from the rest of us. Facebook resells our data for billions, while self-driving cars threaten to put already impoverished Uber drivers out of work. Algorithms drain our 401ks on Wall Street while on the streets of San Francisco, angry locals pelt rocks at the Google bus. Yet at the heart of the conflict between capitalism and the utopian values of the digital age lies a huge opportunity to usher in a new economic Renaissance--if we seize it now.

Media scholar and technology author Douglas Rushkoff--one of today's most original and influential thinkers--identifies this economic turning point. Instead of automating and accelerating the extractive economy, digital technology could catalyze a distributed one. Drawing on sources both contemporary and historical, Rushkoff pioneers a new understanding of the old economic paradigm, from central currency to debt to corporations and labor.

Most importantly, he offers a series of practical steps for businesses, consumers, investors, and policymakers to remake the economic operating system from the inside out--and prosper along the way. Instead of boycotting Walmart or overtaxing the wealthy, we should implement strategies that create value for stakeholders other than ourselves. From our currency to our labor to the corporation itself, all parts of the economy can be reprogrammed with minimal disruption to create a more equitably distributed prosperity for all.

Rushkoff provides a pragmatic, optimistic, and human-centered model for economic progress in the digital age.

'An award-winning author explores how the world works in our age of 'continuous now' Back in the 1970s, futurism was all the rage. But looking forward is becoming a thing of the past. According to Douglas Rushkoff, 'presentism' is the new ethos of a society that's always on, in real time, updating live. Guided by neither history nor long term goals, we navigate a sea of media that blend the past and future into a mash-up of instantaneous experience. Rushkoff shows how this trend is both disorienting and exhilarating. Without linear narrative we get both the humiliations of reality TV and the associative brilliance of The Simpsons. With no time for long term investing, we invent dangerously compressed derivatives yet also revive sustainable local businesses. In politics, presentism drives both the Tea Party and the Occupy movement. In many ways, this was the goal of digital technology--outsourcing our memory was supposed to free us up to focus on the present. But we are in danger of squandering this cognitive surplus on trivia. Rushkoff shows how we can instead ground ourselves in the reality of the present tense. '--

Il futuro che abbiamo rincorso per buona parte del ventesimo secolo è finalmente arrivato: oggi la tecnologia a nostra disposizione ci permette di essere sempre connessi e di avere a portata di mano ogni tipo d'informazione, in qualunque momento. Ma qual è stato l'effetto sulle nostre vite di questa incredibile compressione di spazio e tempo? L'era dell'accesso totale ha un rovescio della medaglia che avevamo sottovalutato. I social network alimentano l'ansia di un costante 'qui e ora' senza direzione e priorità, frammentato e distratto; le email e la messaggistica istantanea ormai sono un assalto. E noi siamo sopraffatti da un illusorio presente continuo che ci sfugge sempre di mano. Douglas rushkoff firma uno dei migliori saggi degli ultimi anni sul rapporto tra tecnologia, società, cultura e vita quotidiana.

Il media-guru Douglas Rushkoff comincia dal punto in cui aveva finito Marshall McLuhan, aiutando i lettori a riconoscere la programmazione come la nuova alfabetizzazione dell'era digitale, un modello attraverso il quale vedere oltre le convenzioni sociali e le strutture di potere che ci hanno tormentato per secoli. Il problema vero è se noi sappiamo gestire la tecnologia o è lei a stabilire cosa facciamo? Per Douglas Rushkoff è necessario scegliere la prima ipotesi 'per avere accesso al pannello di controllo della civiltà'.

This didn’t just happen.

In Life Inc., award-winning writer, documentary filmmaker, and scholar Douglas Rushkoff traces how corporations went from being convenient legal fictions to being the dominant fact of contemporary life. Indeed, as Rushkoff shows, most Americans have so willingly adopted the values of corporations that they’re no longer even aware of it.

This fascinating journey, from the late Middle Ages to today, reveals the roots of our debacle. From the founding of the first chartered monopoly to the branding of the self; from the invention of central currency to the privatization of banking; from the birth of the modern, self-interested individual to his exploitation through the false ideal of the single-family home; from the Victorian Great Exhibition to the solipsism of MySpace–the corporation has infiltrated all aspects of our daily lives. Life Inc. exposes why we see our homes as investments rather than places to live, our 401(k) plans as the ultimate measure of success, and the Internet as just another place to do business.

Most of all, Life Inc. shows how the current financial crisis is actually an opportunity to reverse this six-hundred-year-old trend and to begin to create, invest, and transact directly rather than outsource all this activity to institutions that exist solely for their own sakes.

Corporatism didn’t evolve naturally. The landscape on which we are living–the operating system on which we are now running our social software–was invented by people, sold to us as a better way of life, supported by myths, and ultimately allowed to develop into a self-sustaining reality. It is a map that has replaced the territory.

Rushkoff illuminates both how we’ve become disconnected from our world and how we can reconnect to our towns, to the value we can create, and, mostly, to one another. As the speculative economy collapses under its own weight, Life Inc. shows us how to build a real and human-scaled society to take its place.


From the Hardcover edition.

Douglas Rushkoff was one of the first social commentators to identify the new culture around the internet. He has spent nearly a decade advising companies on the ways they can re-orient their businesses to the transformations the internet has caused. Through his speaking and consulting, Rushkoff has discovered an important and unrecognized shift in American business. Too many companies are panicked and operating in survival mode when the worst of the crisis has already passed.

Likening the internet transformation to the intellectual and technological ferment of the Enlightment, Rushkoff suggests we have a remarkable opportunity to re-integrate our new perspective with the work we actually do. Instead of running around trying to 'think out of the box,' Rushkoff demonstrates, now is the time to 'get back in the box' and improve the way we do our jobs, run our operations and drive innovation from the ground up.

Combining stories gleaned from his consulting with a thrilling tour of history's dramatic moments and clever readings of cultural shift we've just experienced, Rushkoff offers a compelling vision of the simple and effective ways businesses can re-invigorate themselves.

On a landscape that seems to be transforming itself with every new technology, marketing tactic, or investment strategy, businesses rush to embrace change by trading in their competencies or shifting their focus altogether. All in the name of innovation.

But this endless worrying, wriggling, and trend watching only alienates companies from whatever it is they really do best. In the midst of the headlong rush to think 'outside the box,' the full engagement responsible for true innovation is lost. New consultants, new packaging, new marketing schemes, or even new CEOs are no substitute for the evolution of our own expertise as individuals and as businesses.

Indeed, for all their talk about innovation, most companies today are still scared to death of it.

To Douglas Rushkoff, this disconnect is not only predictable but welcome. It marks the happy end of a business cycle that began as long ago as the Renaissance, and ended with the renaissance in creativity and collaboration we're going through today.

The age of mass production, mass media, and mass marketing may be over, but so, too, is the alienation it engendered between producers and consumers, managers and employees, executives and shareholders, and, worst of all, businesses and their own core values and competencies.

American enterprise, in particular, is at a crossroads. Having for too long replaced innovation with acquisitions, tactics, efficiencies, and ad campaigns, many businesses have dangerously lost touch with the process -- and fun -- of discovery.

'American companies are obsessed with window dressing,' Rushkoff writes, 'because they're reluctant, no, afraid to look at whatever it is they really do and evaluate it from the inside out. When things are down, CEOs look to consultants and marketers to rethink, rebrand, or repackage whatever it is they are selling, when they should be getting back on the factory floor, into the stores, or out to the research labs where their product is actually made, sold, or conceived.'

Rushkoff backs up his arguments with a myriad of intriguing historical examples as well as familiar gut checks -- from the dumbwaiter and open source to Volkswagen and The Gap -- in this accessible, thought-provoking, and immediately applicable set of insights. Here's all the help innovators of this era need to reconnect with their own core competencies as well as the passion fueling them.

Bold, daring, and provocative, Media Virus! examines the intricate ways in which popular media both manipulate and are manipulated by those who know how to tap into their power. Douglas Rushkoff shows that where there's a wavelength, there's a way to 'infect' those on it - from the subtly, but intentionally, subversive signals broadcast by shows like 'The Simpsons,' to the O.J. media frenzy surrounding the Nicole Brown Simpson murder case, chase, and trial. What does it all mean? Unless you've been living in a cave that isn't cable-ready, you're already infected with the media virus. But don't worry, it won't make you sick. It will make you think....