Douglas Rushkoff Discusses the Always-On Digital Culture of ‘Present Shock’

Dark Rye, an online magazine by Whole Foods Market, has produced a short video profile of media theorist Douglas Rushkoff, focused on his 2013 book, Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now. A play on the title of Alvin Toffler’s 1970 best-seller Future Shock, Ruskoff’s book explores the anxiety and dissonance of our always-on digital culture.

The only kind of people that were interrupted this frequently and insistently used to be 911 operators and air traffic controllers. They would only do it two to three hours a day and they would be medicated in order to live that way. Present Shock is the human response to living in a world where everything happens now.

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

Brian Heater
Brian Heater