Wall Street Journal adaptation from Present Shock

Adapted from the forthcoming book "Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now" by Douglas Rushkoff, published by Penguin.

Technology has always given us more control over time—especially now at the dawn of the digital age. But no matter how precisely we can count our milliseconds, neither our bodies nor our businesses are proving as programmable as our computers.

Digital technology tends to make one minute look the same as any other. Still, try as we might to ignore them, the people who work for us, invest in us, and buy from us are guided by rhythms we ignore at our peril.

While our technologies may be evolving as fast as we can imagine new ones, we humans and our culture evolved over millennia and are slower to adapt. The body is based on hundreds, perhaps thousands, of different clocks, syncing to everything from the sun and moon to levels of violence and available water. We can't simply declare noon to be midnight and expect our body to conform to the new scheme as if it were a Google Calendar resetting to a new time zone. Neither can we force our businesses to conform to an always-on ethos when the people we work with and for are still obeying a more deeply embedded temporal scheme.

Instead of our offloading time-intensive tasks to our machines, we attempt to match the speed of our network connections. Thanks to the Internet, we travel more on business not less, we work at all hours on demand, and spend our free time answering email or tending to our social networks. Staring into screens, we are less attuned to light of day and the physiological rhythms of our housemates and co-workers. We are more likely to accept the digital clock's illusion that all time is equivalent and interchangeable. But it isn't.

Sure, the always-on philosophy works well for many businesses. During overnight hours, cable channels like Home Shopping Network and QVC are still buzzing. Where department stores may wait until the end of the quarter to find out how a product line is doing, executives at QVC get sales reports as they happen. Likewise, Zara's real-time supply chain turns scans at the register almost directly into a ping for another unit at the factory.

But too many of us also aspire to be "on" at any time and to treat the various portions of the day as mere artifacts of a more primitive culture—the way we look at seemingly archaic blue laws requiring stores to close at least one day a week. We want all access, all the time, to everything—and to match this intensity and availability ourselves: citizens of the virtual city that never sleeps. Ultraefficiency advocate Timothy Ferriss's book "The 4-Hour Body" teaches readers how to "hack sleep" by taking 20-minute naps every four hours instead of a single overnight stretch. It is an approach to the human-body-as-lithium-ion-battery more appropriate for machines than for people.

This is the digital trap: Instead of teaching our technologies to conform to our own innate rhythms, we strive to become more compatible with our machines' timeless nature.

We fetishize concepts such as the cyborg or human technological enhancement, looking to bring our personal evolution up to the pace of Apple system updates. We answer our email as it arrives, we trust Echemistry.com to calculate our best mates, our algorithmically generated Klout scores stand in for social status, and our Nike Fuel bands dictate our fitness goals for the day.

Internet workers are expected to accept the cyborg ethos as a given. Google and Facebook welcome their engineers to work around the clock, providing food, showers, and even laundry service for their programmers. The bathroom stall doors have daily programming tips to read while sitting on the toilet. These campuses are lovely, to be sure, but they may as well be space stations or casinos, always on and utterly cut off from the passage of time.

By letting technology lead the pace, we don't increase genuine choice or human competence at all. Bloggers disconnect themselves from the beats they may be covering by working through the screen and keyboard, covering the online versions of their subjects.

Designers base their fashions on the computer readouts of incoming calls from housewives at 1 a.m. Lovers expect immediate and appropriate responses to their text messages, however tired or overworked the partner might be.

Programmers expect themselves to generate the same quality code at 2 a.m. as they did at 2 p.m. earlier—and are willing to medicate themselves in order to do so. Human investors compete with algorithms trading at ultrafast speeds and responding to our orders before they are even executed. Our digital competitors are quite literally trading in our future.

In each of these cases, the bloggers, designers, lovers, programmers, and investors all sacrifice their connection to real-world rhythms in order to match those dictated by their technologies. Reporters miss out on the actual news cycle and its ebb and flow of activity. Programmers work less efficiently by refusing to recognize naturally peak productive hours. Designers miss out on quite powerfully determinative cultural trends by focusing on the mediated responses of insomniac television viewers. Businesses ignore the natural ebb and flow of market cycles, and poison their own consumers by attempting to stimulate them all season, every season.

Imagine, instead of trying to ride roughshod over these cycles, actually using or even exploiting recent discoveries about our common neurochemical responses to the four-week lunar cycle. Each week, a different neurotransmitter seems to dominate. One week, acetylcholine emphasizes new social contacts. In the next, serotonin enhances productivity. In the third, increased dopamine emphasizes risk-taking and recreation. In the last, norepinephrine heightens our analytic skills. Instead of forcing or drugging ourselves to fight these patterns, we can engage them to enhance our results.

It is an easy mistake to make. The opportunity offered to us by digital technology is to reclaim our time and program our devices to conform to our personal and collective rhythms. Computers don't really care about time. They are machines operating on internal clocks that aren't chronological, but events-based: This happens, then that happens. They don't care how much—or how little—time passes between each step of the sequence. This infinitely flexible relationship to time offers unique opportunities to calculate and act upon the individual and collective cycles making up our enterprises and their markets.

Admittedly, this isn't easy for companies with shareholders who live for the hockey-stick-shaped earnings graph. But that is not the way either people or organizations function—especially not when we are using social networking technologies that connect us and in many ways amplify the rhythmic qualities of our living cultures. For while digital technology can serve to disconnect us from the cycles that have traditionally orchestrated our activities, it can also serve to bring us back into sync.

CNN: Unlike - Why I'm Leaving Facebook

CNN - I used to be able to justify using Facebook as a cost of doing business. As a writer and sometime activist who needs to promote my books and articles and occasionally rally people to one cause or another, I found Facebook fast and convenient. Though I never really used it to socialize, I figured it was okay to let other people do that, and I benefited from their behavior.

 

I can no longer justify this arrangement. Today I am surrendering my Facebook account, because my participation on the site is simply too inconsistent with the values I espouse in my work. In my upcoming book Present Shock, I chronicle some of what happens when we can no longer manage our many online presences. I argue - as I always have - for engaging with technology as conscious human beings, and dispensing with technologies that take that agency away.

 

Facebook is just such a technology. It does things on our behalf when we're not even there. It actively misrepresents us to our friends, and - worse - misrepresents those who have befriended us to still others. To enable this dysfunctional situation -- I call it “digiphrenia” -- would be at the very least hypocritical. But to participate on Facebook as an author, in a way specifically intended to draw out the "likes" and resulting vulnerability of others, is untenable.

 

Facebook has never been merely a social platform. Rather, it exploits our social interactions the way a Tupperware party does. Facebook does not exist to help us make friends, but to turn our network of connections, brand preferences, and activities over time --  our "social graphs" -- into a commodity for others to exploit. We Facebook users have been  building a treasure lode of big data that government and corporate researchers have been mining to predict and influence what we buy and whom we vote for.  We have been handing over to them vast quantities of information about ourselves and our friends, loved ones and acquaintances. With this information, Facebook and the "big data" research firms purchasing their data predict still more things about us - from our future product purchases or sexual orientation to our likelihood for civil disobedience or even terrorism. 

The true end users of Facebook are the marketers who want to reach and influence us. They are Facebook's paying customers; we are the product. And we are its workers. The countless hours that we - and the young, particularly - spend on our profiles constitute the unpaid labor on which Facebook justifies its stock valuation. The efforts of a few thousand employees at Facebook's Menlo Park campus pale in comparison to those of the hundreds of millions of users meticulously tweaking their pages. Corporations used to have to do research to assemble our consumer profiles; now we do it for them.

 

The information collected about you by Facebook through my Facebook page isn't even shared with me. Thanks to my page, Facebook knows the demographics of my readership, their emails, what else they like, who else they know and, perhaps most significant, who they trust. And Facebook is taking pains not to share any of this, going so far as to limit the ability of third-party applications to utilize any of this data.

 

Given that this was the foundation for Facebook's business plan from the start, perhaps more recent developments in the company's ever-evolving user agreement shouldn't have been so disheartening. Still, we bridle at the notion that any of our updates might be converted into "sponsored stories" by whatever business or brand we may have mentioned. That innocent mention of cup of coffee at Starbucks, in the Facebook universe, quickly becomes an attributed endorsement of their brand. Remember, the only way to connect with something or someone is to "like" them. This means if you want to find out what a politician or company you don't like is up to, you still have to endorse them publicly.

 

More recently, users - particularly those with larger sets of friends, followers, and likes - learned that their updates were no longer reaching all of the people who had signed up to get them. Now, we are supposed to pay to "promote" our posts to our friends and, if we pay even more, to *their* friends. Yes, Facebook is entitled to be paid for promoting us and our interests - but this wasn't the deal going in, particularly not for companies who paid Facebook for extra followers in the first place. Neither should users who "friend" my page automatically become the passive conduits for any of my messages to all their friends - just because I paid for it.

 

Which brings me to Facebook's most recent shift, and the one that pushed me over the edge. Through a new variation of the Sponsored Stories feature called Related Posts, users who "like" something can be unwittingly associated with pretty much anything an advertiser pays for. Like email spam with a spoofed identity, the Related Post shows up in a newsfeed right under the user's name and picture. If you 'like' me, you can be shown implicitly recommending me or something I like - something you've never heard of - to others without your consent.

 

For now, as long as I don't like anything myself, I have some measure of control over what those who follow me receive in my name or, worse, are made to appear to be endorsing, themselves. But I feel that control slipping away, and cannot remain part of a system where liking me or my work can be used against you. The promotional leverage that Facebook affords me is not worth the cost. Besides, how can I ask you to like me, when I myself must refuse to like you or anything else?

 

I have always appreciated that agreeing to become publicly linked to me and my work online involves trust. It is a trust I value, but - as it is dependent on the good graces of Facebook - it is a trust I can live up to only by un-friending this particularly anti-social social network. Maybe in doing so I'll help people remember that Facebook is not the Internet. It's just one web site, and it comes with a price.

Publishers Weekly "stars" my upcoming 'Present Shock'

After all these years, my first "starred" review at Publishers Weekly! (yes, you can pre-order this book here) 

Present Shock: 
When Everything Happens Now

Douglas Rushkoff. Current, $25.95 (286p) ISBN 978-1-59184-476-1

Whether or not readers are familiar with the concept of presentism—the theory that society is more focused on the immediacy of the moment in front of them (actually more specifically on the moment that just passed) than the moment before or, perhaps more importantly, the future—they’ve certainly felt the increasing pressure of keeping up with various methods of communication, be it texting, Web surfing, live interactions, or a litany of other media for staying “connected.” Using Alvin Toffler’s concept of “future shock” as a jumping-off point, media theorist Douglas Rushkoff (Cyberia; Get Back in the Box; Media Virus; etc.) deftly weaves in a number of disparate concepts (the Home Shopping Network, zombies, Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns, Internet mashups, hipsters’ approximation of historical ephemera as irony, etc.) to examine the challenge of keeping up with technological advances as well as their ensuing impact on culture and human relations in a world that’s always “on.” By highlighting five areas (the rise of moronic reality TV; our need to be omnipresent; the need to compress time in order to achieve our goals; the compulsion to connect unrelated concepts in an effort to make better sense of them; and a gnawing sense of one’s obsolescence), Rushkoff gives readers a healthy dose of perspective, insight, and critical analysis that’s sure to get minds spinning and tongues wagging. (Mar.)

What I'm Telling Congress on Wednesday: Teach Kids Code

(CNN) -- This week is Computer Science Education Week, which is being observed around the United States with events aimed at highlighting the promise -- and paucity -- of digital education. The climax of the festivities, for me anyway, will be the opportunity to address members of Congress and their staffers on Wednesday in Washington about the value of digital literacy. I've been an advocate of digital culture for the past 20 years, and this feels like the culmination of a lifetime of arguing.

Yes, I was once the one getting laughed out of both cocktail parties and editor's offices for suggesting that someday people would be using word processors to send one another messages over telephone lines. But the vindication I feel for being right about our digital future is tempered by an equally disheartening sense that we are actually missing an opportunity here.

I have never been as enthusiastic about the promise of digital technology itself as about the human potential unleashed by these new tools. Yet I fear this promise is increasingly undermined by our widespread unwillingness to seize the abilities they offer us. Although we live in a highly digital age, digital literacy is not a priority among us. And as a result computer science is not a priority in our schools.

My talk to Congress may not change this overnight. There are many structural impediments to bringing any new curriculum into America's public schools. The multi-year process through which school district decisions are made is incompatible with the development cycles of the Internet startups hoping to meet the demand for digital education. Teachers fear their own inexperience with code may disqualify them from becoming competent instructors. And there's not enough money for the education we already have, much less the education we would like to offer.

But I'm hoping we can get motivated enough to catch up with, say, Estonia (where they teach code to kids) and begin developing a society capable of thriving and competing in a digital world. So to that end, here are the 10 things I plan to say in my 10 minutes on Capitol Hill:

1. When we got language, we didn't just learn how to listen, but how to speak. When we got text, we didn't just learn how to read, but how to write. Now that we have computers, we're learning how to use them -- but not how to program them.

2. Programming a computer is not like being the mechanic of an automobile. We're not looking at the difference between a mechanic and a driver, but between a driver and a passenger. If you don't know how to drive the car, you are forever dependent on your driver to take you where you want to go. You're even dependent on that driver to tell you when a place exists.

3. Not knowing how our digital environments are constructed leads us to accept them at face value. For example, kids think the function of Facebook is to help them keep in touch with friends. Even a bit of digital literacy helps us see that Facebook users are not its customers, but its product.

4. "Computer class" can't be about teaching kids to use today's software; it must be about teaching kids to make tomorrow's software.

5. The failure to teach computer science isn't just impeding kids' understanding of the digital world, but also crippling our nation's competitiveness in business. We outsource programming not because we can't afford American programmers, but because we can't find American programmers.

6. America's military leaders are scared: They have no problem finding recruits who want to fly drones, but have few who want -- or are ready -- to learn how to program them. One Air Force general told me he believes America's competitive advantage on the cybermilitary frontier is one generation away from being lost.

7. We are putting in place a layer of technology, culture, and economics that we'd darn well better do consciously. The technology we build today is the operating system of the society of tomorrow. Right now, painfully few are participating in this -- and usually the choices are made by the highest bidder.

8. Computer Science is not just a STEM -- science, technology, engineering and math -- subject, but a liberal art as well. Being able to think critically about digital media environments means being able to think critically about our world.

9. Kids are already doing algorithms, the basic building blocks of computer programming. Once they learn long division, they are ready to start programming.

10. The resources are out there: Codecademy.com is just one of many free tools (including CSUnplugged.org and Scratch.org) that any teacher can pick up and implement -- if he or she can muster the autonomy to do so. It may just happen that computer education, like the Internet itself, will depend on distributed authority and the bottom-up, enterprising nature of human beings working together.

Code Literacy: A 21st-Century Requirement

Edutopia.org - Ask kids what Facebook is for, and they'll tell you it's there to help them make friends. And, on the surface anyway, that's what it looks like. Of course, anyone who has poked a bit deeper or thought a bit longer about it understands that people programming Facebook aren't sitting around wondering how to foster more enduring relationships for little Johnny, Janey and their friends, but rather how to monetize their social graphs -- the trail of data the site is busy accumulating about Johnny and Janey every second of the day and night.

After all, our kids aren't Facebook's customers; they're the product. The real customers are the advertisers and market researchers paying for their attention and user data. But it's difficult for them or us to see any of this and respond appropriately if we don’t know anything about the digital environment in which all this is taking place. That’s why -- as an educator, media theorist and parent -- I have become dedicated to getting kids code literate.

Digital World Ownership

As I see it, code literacy is a requirement for participation in a digital world. When we acquired language, we didn't just learn how to listen, but also how to speak. When we acquired text, we didn't just learn how to read, but also how to write. Now that we have computers, we are learning to use them but not how toprogram them. When we are not code literate, we must accept the devices and software we use with whatever limitations and agendas their creators have built into them. How many times have you altered the content of a lesson or a presentation because you couldn't figure out how to make the technology work the way you wanted? And have you ever considered that the software's limitations may be less a function of the underlying technology than that of the corporation that developed it? Would you even know where to begin distinguishing between the two?

This puts us and our kids -- who will be living in a more digital world than our own -- at a terrible disadvantage. They are spending an increasing amount of their time in digital environments where the rules have been written by others. Just being familiar with how code works would help them navigate this terrain, understand its limitations and determine whether those limits are there because the technology demands it -- or simply because some company wants it that way. Code literate kids stop accepting the applications and websites they use at face value, and begin to engage critically and purposefully with them instead.

Otherwise, they may as well be at the circus or a magic show.

More generally, knowing something about programming makes us competitive as individuals, companies and a nation. The rest of the world is learning code. Their schools teach it, their companies are filled with employees who get it, and their militaries are staffed by programmers -- not just gamers with joysticks. According to the generals I've spoken with, we are less than a generation away from losing our technological superiority on the cyber battlefield, which should concern a nation depending so heavily on drones for security and electronic trading as an industry.

Finally, learning code -- and doing so in a social context -- familiarizes people with the values of a digital society: the commons, collaboration and sharing. These are replacing the industrial age values of secrecy or the hoarding of knowledge. Learning how software is developed and how the ecosystem of computer technology really works helps us understand the new models through which we'll be working and living as a society. It's a new kind of teamwork, and one that's under-emphasized in our testing-based school systems.

Codeacademy

To build my own code literacy, I decided to take free classes through the online website Codecademy.com, and ended up liking it so much that I'm now working with them to provide free courses for kids to learn to code. The lessons I've learned along the way are of value to parents and teachers looking to grow more code literate young people.

1. Learning by Doing

One of Codecademy's key insights was that programming is best taught by doing. Where literature might best be taught through books, coding is best taught in an interactive environment. So instead of just giving students text to read or videos to watch, Codecademy invites them to learn to code by actually making code. Every online lesson involves writing lines of code in an interactive window within the web browser, and then hitting the "run" button and watching those lines actually work. Instant payoff, and an "intrinsic reward."

2. A Stake in the Outcome

Code also makes much more sense to people when it is tied to a real project. People need reasons for learning one skill or another. When students are working to devise a computer adventure game, all of a sudden abstract mathematical functions become immediately relevant.

3. Benefits of Interaction

Finally, while badges and point scores are great for motivating students in the short run, social connections to a real group of cohorts probably matter more for the long haul. Codecademy's first strides in that direction, simple forums, allow users to seek out help from others when they're stuck in a lesson. Meanwhile, those who are mastering a skill find it really sinks in when they have the opportunity to explain things to someone encountering it for the first time. Just as research has shown a heterogeneous classroom benefits those on both ends of the aptitude spectrum, interaction between more and less experienced code learners benefits both.

After-School Adventures

The greatest challenge so far, at least from my end, has been figuring out ways to get these interactive lessons into the schools that need them. Between curriculum standards, overworked faculty and legal restrictions on inviting minors to use websites, it's an uphill battle. To help with these challenges, Codecademy has unveiled an after-school program through which any parent or teacher can teach code to a self-selecting group of interested students.

Codecademy.com/afterschool is basically "Codecademy in a box." It's a year of interactive lesson tracks, specially assembled for an after-school group or club run by an adult with no programming experience. In the fall semester, kids make a website by learning HTML and CSS. In the spring, they build an adventure game by learning Javascript. The beauty of the model is that the adult supervising all this needn't know anything about code in advance. The course materials let you know everything you need to stay a week ahead of the kids, and the rest of the online community is there to help you out if you get stuck.

When I learned about the after-school program, I was compelled to tweet, "No Excuses." That's about the best I can say it. The obstacles to code literacy are getting smaller every day, while the liabilities for ignorance are only getting more profound.

What steps are you taking to bring code literacy into your classroom?