Douglas Rushkoff: Letting Technology Define Us No More
Douglas Rushkoff is a writer, podcaster, and documentarian who studies and teaches about digital autonomy. He earned his PhD from Utrecht University studying New Media and Digital Culture. Rushkoff’s work involves examining different technological environments and how they influence human relationships with money, power, and narrative. Rushkoff has been a leading advocate for using digital technologies for both social and economic justice. Recent publications from him include Team Human, Present Shock, and Throwing Rocks and the Google Bus. Some of his well-known documentaries include Generation Like, The Persuaders, and Merchants of Cool.
In 2019, Rushkoff wrote an article for the Guardian called “We’ve spent the decade letting our tech define us. It’s out of control” that passionately voices how blind many technology users are to the influences of technology in their own lives. As Rushkoff explains, technology can be polarizing and addictive as it is currently designed. And our desire to “fix” the situation is to blame CEOs, blame each other, and blame decisions made almost 20 years ago (like selling personal data). We even want to blame Russian bots and meme campaigns for the massive spread of misinformation and data collection. Instead, Rushkoff argues that these manipulative behaviors has forced us into our own never-ending spiral of technological doom. We are the problem to finding the solution. Rushkoff explains in his article that:
“The quest for exponential returns may have fueled the development of extractive and addictive technologies, but the cultural phenomena they gave birth to now have a life of their own.” -Douglas Rushkoff
Rushkoff calls to bring back our humanity in technology. When we think about Meredith Broussard’s coining of technochauvinism, we remember how technology never has and never will be the answer to all of our problems (Broussard 2018); instead, Rushkoff believes the answer is within our human connections to one another. When we read between the lines of his article, we can see that the answer is simple: let’s take time to “reconnect to reality”.
Rsuhkoff mentioned an interesting term in his article: captology. An article by HBI describes further in depth the ways that technology changes our behavior and identity. Captology comes from the acronym “Computers as Persuasive Technologies”. The end of this article argues that though technology is the most persuasive tool, creators have the ability to rewire our own brains and take back control.
Now, will changing technology be easy to do? I’m not so sure. The addictive properties and blinding polarization of technology has made it difficult for us to see clearly. Is it bad that the traditional science fiction stories from the 1920s about the dangers of technology are coming to my mind right now? The fact that those stories might be right? In classic science fiction, from authors such as H.G. Wells and Issac Asimov, we see how writers projected from the 1920s–1940s that the root of the problem with technology was technochauvinism.
When I take a look at the Digital Studies minor that we are about to complete at GVSU, I can see that the main work of the minor has been more about how to approach technology than how to use it. We’ve learned how we can take advantage of technology as a platform for change, communities, and discussion instead of letting it take advantage of us. After all, taking classes about humanity and culture has been a crucial part of the minor, which may help us to follow Rushkoff’s advice: reconnecting with reality. One thing that all of those classic science fiction stories left out was that there’s still time to change; we haven’t read the ending yet.
