Sunday
Jan252009
Front Wheel Drive, "Media Assassin"
Sunday, January 25, 2009 at 12:04AM
by Roy Christopher
Media assassin/social theorist Douglas Rushkoff is as comfortable dissecting youth subculture as he is unveiling the evils of mainstream media. He is also a well of insight where the emerging issues of our near future are concerned as evidenced in his many non-fiction books. Whatver chaos is bubbling near the surface of the Next Big Thing, there is no doubt people will be listening to what Rushkoff has to say about it.
His only fiction work, Ecstasy Club is currently being made into a film by Miramax pictures. royc. cornered him online recently and got the following information:
frontwheeldrive: Not having read it, what can you tell me in advance about your newest piece of non-fiction (Playing the Future)?
Douglas Rushkoff: Well, for one it's no longer my newest piece of non-fiction. I just finished a book called Coercion: Why We Listen to What 'They' Say, which comes out in September from Riverhead books. That one's about pretty much what it sounds like: how we're engaged in a coercive arms race, developing new marketing techniques as fast as we develop countermeasures against them.
Playing the Future will be coming out in paperback at the same time. That's a much more optimistic book, deconstructing youth culture for indications of how to cope with chaos. I look at everything from vid games to snowboarding, giving them credit for training us how to thrive in the increasingly non-linear future before us. It was "radical," I suppose, in that it claimed shows like Beavis and Butt-head or MST3K are actually good for us.
Having seen the world wide web grow from geek media to global marketing phenom, do you feel a loss with all the corporate interests now involved?
Well, it makes me sad if that's what you mean. While the real estate online is still essentially infinite, most people think of the Internet as this Web interface, which couldn't be further from the truth. I suppose we should have expected all the money to pour into interfaces that promote marketing and prevent communication. It just seemed to me, back when, that we'd be a bit more resistant to this shift than we proved to be. Still, this, too, is likely to change. New technologies like Hotline and others threaten to challenge the Web's dominance. And if people get sick of buying stuff, they'll begin looking for other ways to use these technologies.
How is the film version of Ecstasy Club coming along? Any details?
Details? Miramax is the company, Konrad Pictures is the producer. I've read a few drafts, and they're all different from one another, and all very different from the book. I suppose that's to be expected, though. The real question is whether they'll be able to create the vibe of the book on the screen. They had a writer from California who did two drafts, and then they hired a different one - James Merendino, who wrote and directed SLC Punk - to start over. He seems to understand the world of the book, and the SF rave scene, pretty well.
Unfortunately, except when the producers are generous enough to Xerox a copy of a script and send it over, I've got nothing to do with the movie at all. I would have liked to, but I think they figure I'd be difficult, or that I'd be incapable of discarding the parts of the book that don't work for a movie. It's possible.
You've been invariably associated with the emerging field of Memetic Engineering. Is this something with which you align yourself?
Well, I don't know if memetic engineering is something one aligns oneself with. I've been into memes off-and-on since Media Virus, and I still think they're an interesting way to understand culture. But meme conversations spend much more time explaining memes than they accomplish. In other words, the metaphor itself seems more complex than the ideas it is meant to convey. So I've abandoned the notion of memes pretty much altogether.
I remember I was doing an interview about Media Virus for some magazine, and it was taking place at Timothy Leary's house. And he overheard me mention memes, and the journalist asking me to explain to him what 'memes' are. Afterwards, Timothy teased me. "Two years you've been carrying on about memes," he said. "If you still have to explain what they are every time you mention them, it means they just haven't caught on. Drop 'em."
Are there any other specific facets of your research/theory that you'd like to bring up in the context of emerging science/new media?
Well, recently I've been considering more organized forms of religion as the chief way that generations have of communicating to one another over time. Basically, religion and sacred text as a communications medium that spans centuries, allowing people to tap into and assist humankind in its greater projects. I guess we're talking rearwheeldrive.
Media assassin/social theorist Douglas Rushkoff is as comfortable dissecting youth subculture as he is unveiling the evils of mainstream media. He is also a well of insight where the emerging issues of our near future are concerned as evidenced in his many non-fiction books. Whatver chaos is bubbling near the surface of the Next Big Thing, there is no doubt people will be listening to what Rushkoff has to say about it.His only fiction work, Ecstasy Club is currently being made into a film by Miramax pictures. royc. cornered him online recently and got the following information:
frontwheeldrive: Not having read it, what can you tell me in advance about your newest piece of non-fiction (Playing the Future)?
Douglas Rushkoff: Well, for one it's no longer my newest piece of non-fiction. I just finished a book called Coercion: Why We Listen to What 'They' Say, which comes out in September from Riverhead books. That one's about pretty much what it sounds like: how we're engaged in a coercive arms race, developing new marketing techniques as fast as we develop countermeasures against them.
Playing the Future will be coming out in paperback at the same time. That's a much more optimistic book, deconstructing youth culture for indications of how to cope with chaos. I look at everything from vid games to snowboarding, giving them credit for training us how to thrive in the increasingly non-linear future before us. It was "radical," I suppose, in that it claimed shows like Beavis and Butt-head or MST3K are actually good for us.
Having seen the world wide web grow from geek media to global marketing phenom, do you feel a loss with all the corporate interests now involved?
Well, it makes me sad if that's what you mean. While the real estate online is still essentially infinite, most people think of the Internet as this Web interface, which couldn't be further from the truth. I suppose we should have expected all the money to pour into interfaces that promote marketing and prevent communication. It just seemed to me, back when, that we'd be a bit more resistant to this shift than we proved to be. Still, this, too, is likely to change. New technologies like Hotline and others threaten to challenge the Web's dominance. And if people get sick of buying stuff, they'll begin looking for other ways to use these technologies.
How is the film version of Ecstasy Club coming along? Any details?
Details? Miramax is the company, Konrad Pictures is the producer. I've read a few drafts, and they're all different from one another, and all very different from the book. I suppose that's to be expected, though. The real question is whether they'll be able to create the vibe of the book on the screen. They had a writer from California who did two drafts, and then they hired a different one - James Merendino, who wrote and directed SLC Punk - to start over. He seems to understand the world of the book, and the SF rave scene, pretty well.
Unfortunately, except when the producers are generous enough to Xerox a copy of a script and send it over, I've got nothing to do with the movie at all. I would have liked to, but I think they figure I'd be difficult, or that I'd be incapable of discarding the parts of the book that don't work for a movie. It's possible.
You've been invariably associated with the emerging field of Memetic Engineering. Is this something with which you align yourself?
Well, I don't know if memetic engineering is something one aligns oneself with. I've been into memes off-and-on since Media Virus, and I still think they're an interesting way to understand culture. But meme conversations spend much more time explaining memes than they accomplish. In other words, the metaphor itself seems more complex than the ideas it is meant to convey. So I've abandoned the notion of memes pretty much altogether.
I remember I was doing an interview about Media Virus for some magazine, and it was taking place at Timothy Leary's house. And he overheard me mention memes, and the journalist asking me to explain to him what 'memes' are. Afterwards, Timothy teased me. "Two years you've been carrying on about memes," he said. "If you still have to explain what they are every time you mention them, it means they just haven't caught on. Drop 'em."
Are there any other specific facets of your research/theory that you'd like to bring up in the context of emerging science/new media?
Well, recently I've been considering more organized forms of religion as the chief way that generations have of communicating to one another over time. Basically, religion and sacred text as a communications medium that spans centuries, allowing people to tap into and assist humankind in its greater projects. I guess we're talking rearwheeldrive.
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