Douglas Rushkoff Plays for Team Human
The Forrest Four-Cast: September 17, 2018
Over the weekend, I spent a few hours catching up with some of the most recent videos and writings from media theorist, writer, columnist, lecturer, graphic novelist, documentarian, cultural critic, reluctant futurist and robot collector Douglas Rushkoff.
One of my favorite views from this catch-up was his talk at the Nesta FutureFest event in July in London. What I most like about this talk (beyond his mention of a SXSW lecture he did in the mid 1990s) is Rushkoff’s ongoing effort to recapture the future as an active and shared venture for humans, not an effort that is entirely controlled by cold algorithms. As he notes in the Nest video, the main challenge here is that “we have been trained to see humanity as the problem and technology as the solution.”
Rushkoff fans should also check out his July 5 piece in Medium titled “Survival of the Richest.” This eight-minute read covers some of the same material from the Nesta speech, specifically his meeting with billionaires who wanted to know how to survive the tech apocalypse.
This prolific author returns to the Featured Speaker stage at SXSW in March 2019, where he will talk about his newest book “Team Human.” Buy your badge before for March Magic before the end of day September 17 to save big on registration fees.
Hugh Forrest serves as Chief Programming Officer at SXSW, the world’s most unique gathering of creative professionals. He also tries to write at least four paragraphs per day on Medium. These posts often cover tech-related trends; other times they focus on books, pop culture, sports and other current events.
