Rushkoff on Technology and Collective Life

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In relation to Douglas Rushkoff's new book Program or be Programmed: Ten Commands for the Digital Age, shareable.net asked their community of contributors to engage the author through a series of questions and answers. The result is an interesting exploration of technology, culture and individuality from one of today’s leading public thinkers.

Here are a few choice excerpts:

There is almost certainly an evolutionary drive toward increasing complexity in the face of entropy. That’s practically a definition of life. Technology is so powerful and attractive to us because it holds the promise of greater complexity and greater connectedness. Atoms to molecules to cells to organelles to organisms. What’s next? No one knows for sure, but it sure ain’t Facebook.

I have been saying from the beginning—the early ’90s anyway—that we are looking at collective organism. But unlike some kind of fascist Borg, we don’t have to lose our individuality. It is actually enhanced as more people become aware of everyone else. Not a hive, but more of a coral reef.

And:

Making money, or earning a living, is not anathema to freedom and democracy. They are the same thing. That's what democracy came out of: people fighting for the right to make a living instead of having to work for the feudal lords.

Further into it:

If any economy is really just a ledger to prevent freeloading, then we can't expect it to reflect the deeper values and relationships and place. You're talking about an ecology of interactions and transmissions. That ecology—at least right now—is much more complex and multifaceted when it occurs in real life, among people who know each other as creatures and not just usernames. But there are ways in which we need to interact as a species on greater scales, and the net allows for a lot of this. We simply can't forget that such engagements are necessarily simplified. They aren't bad, they're just limited.

Check out the whole interview and article @ Shareable.Net – it is well worth the read.

[h/t Integral Options Cafe]