Biography

Douglas Rushkoff is the author of pop-culture and media theory books including "Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace", a portrait of the 1990's cyberculture, "The GenX Reader", a collection of writings by the elusive, media-wary "slacker" generation, and "Media Virus! Hidden Agendas in Popular Culture", a journey through the complexities of today's datasphere and media obsessions. His latest book, "Playing the Future", explores the culture of the "screenagers" for their insights on thriving in an increasingly chaotic age. As a journalist, Rushkoff is currently writing a politics column as Contributing Editor for Virtual City, and regularly writes articles about pop-culture, media and technology for magazines and newspapers. Rushkoff has served as a technology and culture consultant to the United Nations Commission on World Culture, as well as companies including Sony, Interval Research, Turner Broadcasting, NIMA, and TCI. As a computer software developer, Rushkoff conceived and developed the Electronic Oracle series of programs. He is also Host of the Mind Conference on The Well.

http://www.levity.com/rushkoff

http://www.users.interport.net/~rushkoff/index10.htm

Quotes

Douglas Rushkoff
It's Just Memetics. It Ain't Eugenics

"I'm certainly not a scientist, nor even a social theorist in the strict sense of the title. I am just an American who has probably watched far too much TV and spent a bit too much time online. I wrote a few books - Media Virus, Cyberia, and Playing the Future - and have taken a lot of heat for advocating some seemlingly cyberutopian-come-fascist memes. The meme that's gotten me in the most trouble is the "meme" meme itself. Although many social scientists originally embraced the notion of memes for its ability to ground a fairly inexact discipline in the language of hard science, the debate over their effectiveness in describing cultural phenomena quickly degenerated into a fearful premonition of neo-eugenic, civilization-wide fascism."