Program Or Be Programmed: Ten Commands For A Digital Age (2010) - Plot & Excerpts
Not so much a treatise on coding, more a sociological examination of the effects of the internet.Here are some quotes:Political organizers who believed the Internet would consolidate their constituencies find that net petitions and self-referential blogging now serve as substitutes for action.A news media that saw in information networks new opportunities for citizen journalism and responsive, twenty-four-hour news gathering has grown sensationalist, unprofitable, and devoid of useful facts.[T]he loud and lewd drown out anything that takes more than a few moments to understand.[T]he underlying capability of the computer era is actually programming—which almost none of us knows how to do.The people hear while the rabbis read; the people read while those with access to the printing press write; today we write, while our techno-elite programs. As a result, most of society remains one full dimensional leap of awareness and capability behind the few who manage to monopolize access to the real power of any media age.We don’t celebrate the human stars of this medium, the way we marveled at the stars of radio, film, or television; we are mesmerized instead by the screens and touchpads themselves. Instead of pursuing new abilities, we fetishize new toys.The beauty of the early net was its timelessness. Conversations took place on bulletin boards over periods of weeks or months. ...If anything, because our conversations were asynchronous, we had the luxury of deeply considering what we said.No matter how proficient we think we are at multitasking, studies show our ability to accomplish tasks accurately and completely only diminishes the more we try to do at the same time.We have no time to make considered responses, feeling instead obligated to reply to every incoming message on impulse.Every answered email spawns more. The quicker we respond, the more of an expectation we create that we will respond that rapidly again... The slower we respond—the more we do the net on our own schedule instead of the one we think it is imposing on us—the more respect we command from the people on the other side of the screen. Of course, the simplest way out is to refuse to be always on. The processes we used to use for finding a doctor or a friend, mapping a route, or choosing a restaurant are being replaced by machines that may, in fact, do it better. What we lose in the bargain, however, is not just the ability to remember certain facts, but to call upon certain skills.So instead of simply offloading our memory to external hard drives, we’re beginning to offload our thinking as well. She relates to her friends through the network, while practically ignoring whomever she is with at the moment. We can watch live feed of the oil from an underwater well leaking into the ocean, or a cell phone video of an activist getting murdered in the street by a dictator’s police. But with little more to do about it than blog from the safety of our bedrooms, such imagery tends to disconnect and desensitize us rather than engage us fully.[E]arly tests of analog recordings compared to digital ones revealed that music played back on a CD format had much less of a positive impact on depressed patients than the same recording played back on a record.We... get into trouble if we equate such cherry-picked knowledge with the kind one gets pursuing a genuine inquiry.Both sides in a debate can cherry-pick the facts that suit them—enraging their constituencies and polarizing everybody.Instead of learning about our technology, we opt for a world in which our technology learns about us.[N]ew and disturbing studies in Germany have shown young people raised on MP3s can no longer distinguish between the several hundred thousand musical sounds their parents can hear.The less we take responsibility for what we say and do online, the more likely we are to behave in ways that reflect our worst natures—or even the worst natures of others. Because digital technology is biased toward depersonalization, we must make an effort not to operate anonymously, unless absolutely necessary. [O]ur digital behaviors closely mirror those of Asperger’s sufferers: a dependence on the verbal over the visual, low pickup on social cues and facial expressions, apparent lack of empathy, and the inability to make eye contact. This describes any of us online, typing to one another, commonly misunderstanding each other’s messages, insulting one another unintentionally...[O]nly 7 percent of human communication occurs on the verbal level. Pitch, volume, and other vocal tone account for 38 percent, and body movements such as gestures and facial expression account for a whopping 55 percent. As we have all experienced, the way a person makes eye contact can mean a whole lot more to us than whatever he is saying. But online, we are depending entirely on that tiny 7 percent of what we use in the real world. Absent the cues on which we usually depend to feel safe, establish rapport, or show agreement, we are left to wonder what the person on the other end really means or really thinks of us. Our mirror neurons—the parts of our brains that enjoy and are reinforced by seeing someone nod or smile while we are sharing something—remain mute. The dopamine we expect to be released when someone agrees with us doesn’t flow. We remain in the suspicious, protective crouch, even when the situation would warrant otherwise—if only we were actually there. Finally, after a series of violations by small businesses looking to promote their services online, the net was opened for commercial use.Our digital networks are biased toward social connections—toward contact. Any effort to redefine or hijack those connections for profit end up compromising the integrity of the network itself, and compromising the real promise of contact. People are able to sense when a social network is really serving some other purpose.The anger people feel over a social networking site’s ever-changing policies really has less to do with any invasion of their privacy than the monetization of their friendships. The information gleaned from their activity is being used for other than social purposes—and this feels creepy. Friends are not bought and sold.Content was never king, contact is.Just as a species can get stronger through natural selection of genes, a society gets stronger through the natural selection of memes.By learning the difference between sharing and stealing, we can promote openness without succumbing to selfishness.[T]he fact that we can copy and distribute anything that anybody does, does not make it right. Value is still being extracted from the work—it’s just being taken from a different place in the production cycle, and not passed down to the creators themselves. And so it goes, all the while being characterized as the new openness of a digital society, when in fact we are less open to one another than we are to exploitation from the usual suspects at the top of the traditional food chain.The people on the other side of the screen spent time and energy on the things we read and watch.America, the country that once put men on the moon, is now falling behind most developed and many developing nations in computer education. We do not teach programming in most public schools. Instead of teaching programming, most schools with computer literacy curriculums teach programs.Meanwhile, kids in other countries—from China to Iran—aren’t wasting their time learning how to use off-the-shelf commercial software packages. They are finding out how computers work. They learn computer languages, they write software and, yes, some of them are even taught the cryptography and other skills they need to breach Western cyber-security measures... it’s just a matter of a generation before they’ve surpassed us.Programming is the sweet spot, the high leverage point in a digital society. If we don’t learn to program, we risk being programmed ourselves.The irony here is that computers are frightfully easy to learn. Programming is immensely powerful, but it is really no big deal to learn.For the person who understands code, the whole world reveals itself as a series of decisions made by planners and designers for how the rest of us should live. Fully open and customizable operating systems, like Linux, are much more secure than closed ones such as Microsoft Windows. In fact, the back doors that commercial operating systems leave for potential vendors and consumer research have made them more vulnerable to attack than their open source counterparts.Finally, we have the tools to program. Yet we are content to seize only the capability of the last great media renaissance, that of writing.But while Renaissance kings maintained their monopoly over the printing presses by force, today’s elite is depending on little more than our own disinterest.In the long term, if we take up this challenge, we are looking at nothing less than the conscious, collective intervention of human beings in their own evolution.[T]he more humans become involved in their design, the more humanely inspired these tools will end up behaving.Even if we don’t all go out and learn to program—something any high school student can do with a decent paperback on the subject and a couple of weeks of effort—we must at least learn and contend with the essential biases of the technologies we will be living and working with from here on. Though a short, little book, this is dense with good information and ideas. The title might lead you to expect that information to be technical and only for those already conversant in computer code, but that's not the case at all. It's not really about programming so much as it is about an ethics of digital media use. It's about how to use our digital technology as tools that we control instead of letting it dictate the terms of use--and our habits, perceptions, and thoughts--to us. To do so, we have to understand just what the tools are and how they work, which means grasping at least the logic and structures of the underlying programming. So if you want to accomplish command six--Identity: Be Yourself--for instance, you will be more successful if you understand that digital technologies are biased toward depersonalization; you need to understand how the technology creates the dynamic if you want to reverse it to have more civil, engaging, humane, and ethical digital interactions. It's all about knowing how to be in charge of the technology instead of vice versa.While not earth-shattering, I definitely found this book insightful. It's helped me articulate some feelings I only vaguely understood and opened my eyes to some new thoughts. He's able to communicate effectively and concisely without getting dry or technical. I can't remember what article or video or reference brought Rushkoff to my attention, but I thought all of his books sounded interesting and decided to start with the shortest one to verify that impression; after reading this, I'll be going to back to look into the others.
What do You think about Program Or Be Programmed: Ten Commands For A Digital Age (2010)?
I enjoy Rushkoff's take on our current world. His advice is usually well worth taking into account.
—omega
Setter programmering i et sivilisasjons/kulturelt perspektiv.
—jobarch
Everyone should be required to read this book.
—Ginger
