Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Era

9:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
Westend I

We continue to accept new technologies into our lives with little or no understanding of how these devices work and work on us. We do not know how to program our computers, nor do we care. We spend much more time and energy trying to figure out how to use them to program one another, instead. And this is a potentially grave mistake.

Just as the invention of text utterly transformed human society, disconnecting us from much of what we held sacred, our migration to the digital realm will also require a new template for maintaining our humanity. In this talk, Rushkoff shares the biases of digital media, and what that means for how we should use them.

The Speaker

Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff’s dozen best-selling books on media and society, including Cyberia, Media Virus, Get Back in the Box, and Life, Inc., have been translated into 30 languages. He is a columnist for The Daily Beast and his articles have been regularly published in The New York Times and Discover, among many other publications. His new book, Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age is now available exclusively from OR Books.