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Feb072009
Washington Times, "Gen-X Seer Is Attacked by Alternativist Hysteria"
Saturday, February 7, 2009 at 3:49PM
Copyright 1997 News World Communications, Inc.
The Washington Times
August 4, 1997, Monday, Final Edition
SECTION: Part CULTURE: DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF; Pg. 22
LENGTH: 1712 words
HEADLINE: Gen-X Seer Is Attacked by Alternativist Hysteria
BYLINE: Michael Rust; INSIGHT
BODY:
SUMMARY: The religious right decries his heterodox spirituality. The left wing condemns him for the sin of making a living. Yet through it all Douglas Rushkoff continues to think for himself - and suffers for it.
TEXT: For much of his brief, prolific literary career, author Douglas Rushkoff might have seemed to be the epitome of that ubiquitous description, "alternative." When he writes his culture column for the New York Times syndicate and the United Kingdom's Guardian, or prepares to address the corporate and academic audiences who invite him to speak about computers, youth culture and the mysteries of twentysomething marketing, he sticks to his usual uniform of jeans, sneakers, T-shirts and bowling shirts. He writes, lectures and consults on the young, hip, rave and cyber subcultures. He was willing to appear in print as editor of an anthology that uses the phrase "Gen-X" in its title; he was a friend of the late Timothy Leary and, in fact, wrote an account for Esquire of the cancer-stricken psychedelic guru's last days.
But this perception needs modification. Rushkoff's latest book, a first novel called Ecstasy Club, challenges those who would construct and celebrate "alternative" cultures. The tale of a group of idealistic young people in the San Francisco Bay area who attempt to forge an alternative society was written before the Heaven's Gate cult tragedy in San Diego, but Rushkoff says he "wanted to show that if people just kind of embrace this postpsychedelic rave Internet philosophy wholeheartedly, and abandon real culture, then they could end up with some real problems."
The novel's characters "slowly learn that, by isolating themselves from regular culture, they fall prey to cultism, conspiracy theory, paranoia," Rushkoff, 36, tells Insight. "And they find out there are people in our culture who are more than willing to take credit for any conspiracy you can imagine."
Rushkoff readily admits that his reputation was, to a large extent, made when he was "called by these stupid magazines some kind of a cyberpundit." But as government and culture embraced new information technologies, he has come to see that a certain distance from that world might be appropriate. "I was starting to get concerned with all the 'cybergurudom' going on, how seriously people were taking cyberculture and how difficult it was for people who had completely embraced that chaos to deal with daily life reality stuff."
Some even have noted with surprise that the book actually seems to support, for lack of a better phrase, family values. And Rushkoff, once seen as a cheerleader for a slacker generation that prefers on-line relationships to flesh and blood, is unapologetic. "If you really want to evolve, try to have a relationship; try to have a kid," he says. "If you really want to have a spiritual challenge, try to keep a job without [violating] your fellows. That's where it is. It's not about going out in some bizarre communal space and disappearing."
While Rushkoff's first book, Free Rides, a study of the use of modern and ancient technologies to alter consciousness, appeared 10 years ago, his public persona really came into focus with 1994's Cyberia, a portrait of the early nineties cyberculture. Rushkoff had noticed that many of his Princeton classmates who had been involved with psychedelic drugs during their college days had ended up in California working for the computer industry, and he was intrigued by a possible connection between an affinity for mind-altering drugs and the new information revolution. The book established him as a marketable media symbol of a technology-inspired culture that still was quite mysterious to the bulk of consenting adults. And this persona has dogged him ever since.
"It's been a hindrance to communication, but it helped my bank account," says Rushkoff. "All I've been trying to communicate is that we live in a culture where the tools of social programming are obsolete. And that kids were the first immune so-called target media." He tried to say this in a furious surge of literary productivity: four books in less than four years.
Following Cyberia was 1994's Media Virus!, which argued that our media-soaked culture, which Rushkoff dubbed the "datasphere," is susceptible to "media viruses" - events, ideas and controversies, such as the O.J. Simpson trial, the beating of Rodney King, or Vice President Dan Quayle's Murphy Brown remark - which quickly spread through the system. That same year, he edited the Gen-X Reader, and last year came out with Playing the Future, a look at "screenagers" - young people raised on diets of television, computers and video games.
In the wake of Media Virus!, Rushkoff was hailed by New Perspectives Quarterly as "the new [Marshall] McLuhan." And as his reputation as a seer of the new information age spread, "Companies, rather than wanting to buy my books, wanted me to come live and say the same things to them that were in my books." But what the media gods give, they also can take away. Rushkoff, uncomfortable in the role of guru, has found himself under attack from all sides of the ideological spectrum, as well as from erstwhile comrades in the information revolution.
Elements of the religious right decry his heterodox brand of spirituality; cybergurus of the sort connected with Wired, the San Francsico-based monthly, have attacked him on the Internet; and the "alternative" left-wing press also has denounced him - often, for the sin of making a living.
Rushkoff says he was nave about the "left alternative cool media" such as the Village Voice, L.A. Weekly, L.A. Reader and Bay Guardian. "Really, they're kids being supported by their parents, making $300 a week writing these things," he says. "And the only way they feel they can climb up is by attacking those they perceive as being higher than them." Conservatives attack him "on what I say," says Rushkoff. "They actually read the book and critique it and say I'm wrong or I'm evil." In contrast, "when the left hits me for anything I say or do because of some media coverage they've seen about me that says I make money - the left, which is supposed to be so media literate; the left, which is supposed to understand that of course there are going to be disinformation campaigns from the right about who I am and what I'm trying to say; the left, who reads something on HotWired, assumes it's true and then re-publishes those wrong facts along with smarmy comments about who they think I am - it's pathetic."
On the left, "there is a conspiracy of failure," he says, "where anyone who we perceive of as having made any money must be evil. That's because the left is based on the idea there's some form of economic inequality, so as soon as someone's got any money, they are part of the problem."
These days, Rushkoff describes politics as "the jockeying for power in institutionalized government structures" - something with little appeal for him. "I'm populist and I'm tolerant," he says.
When the left sneers at Rushkoff, it often has its roots in a New York Times piece that still sets his teeth on edge. While interviewing Rushkoff on his way to a Discovery Channel conclave, Times reporter Trip Gabriel discovered that a corporation had paid Rushkoff $5,000 to participate in an Amsterdam conference on how best to market to young people. Rushkoff admitted that after all the meals and meetings had been eliminated, he actually had done about 40 minutes' worth of work at the gathering. In the Times article, this was transformed into an assertion that Rushkoff was paid up to $7,500 an hour to explain to executives the meaning of "whatever" in the lyrics of dead grunge rocker Kurt Cobain.
It soon became apparent that much of what Rushkoff calls "the reactionary left-wing press" was quite eager to believe the Times, seemingly the epitome of establishment media. "It hurt so much to see [alternative media] saying 'he's a media whore and he makes $7,500 an hour selling screenage secrets,'" says Rushkoff. "I'm writing out-on-a-limb books, on psychedelics and rave culture and counterculture. I'm a true counterculture proponent and I see things like that in the counterculture press."
In fact, Rushkoff says that when he first started writing on these subjects, he was earning an annual $8,000 writing screenplays and political commentary for alternative publications in Los Angeles. Eight years ago, he was preparing to fly to New York to take a job as senior editor with Fame, a New York monthly, when he received word that the magazine had folded. Since all of his belongings already were being shipped back to New York, he decided to return to his hometown anyway, and on the plane wrote out a prospectus for what became Cyberia.
And while the left attacks him as a sellout, the "cybercommunity" - a competitive and incestuous collection of programmers, marketers, editors, writers and critics - also was zeroing in on Rushkoff, who dates this animosity to the publication of Cyberia. "A lot of people in San Francisco hated me since 1993 when Cyberia first came out, because it was a book that didn't include most of them," he says.
And Rushkoff does not seem to miss the approval of information-age gurus. In fact, Ecstasy Club was meant, says Rushkoff, as "a book that burst that whole kind of Wired bubble - this neo-libertarian egomaniacal nonsense over there. I wanted to show people how false all this cyberpunditry really is; that 'cyberpundit' is an oxymoron to the core."
Some in the cybercommunity criticized Rushkoff for writing "traditional" books, but the print and paper hold no terrors for him. "Great writers throughout history have looked for experiences outside literature and tried to express it" in text, he points out. "Now, on-line is just a place where I do business."
But sometimes fun still can creep in. "These kids in Leeds, England, are creating a fake Ecstasy Club Web site," he says. "It's going to be the 'real' Ecstasy Club talking about how they're suing me for writing this book under the pseudonym 'Doug Rushkoff.'" The prospects are enticing, he adds. "I'm going to see if I can create a media virus about that."
GRAPHIC: Photo (color), Rushkoff's advice: Maintain the distinction between cyberculture and reality., By Kozak for Insight
--
Copyright © 1998 LEXIS-NEXIS, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
The Washington Times
August 4, 1997, Monday, Final Edition
SECTION: Part CULTURE: DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF; Pg. 22
LENGTH: 1712 words
HEADLINE: Gen-X Seer Is Attacked by Alternativist Hysteria
BYLINE: Michael Rust; INSIGHT
BODY:
SUMMARY: The religious right decries his heterodox spirituality. The left wing condemns him for the sin of making a living. Yet through it all Douglas Rushkoff continues to think for himself - and suffers for it.
TEXT: For much of his brief, prolific literary career, author Douglas Rushkoff might have seemed to be the epitome of that ubiquitous description, "alternative." When he writes his culture column for the New York Times syndicate and the United Kingdom's Guardian, or prepares to address the corporate and academic audiences who invite him to speak about computers, youth culture and the mysteries of twentysomething marketing, he sticks to his usual uniform of jeans, sneakers, T-shirts and bowling shirts. He writes, lectures and consults on the young, hip, rave and cyber subcultures. He was willing to appear in print as editor of an anthology that uses the phrase "Gen-X" in its title; he was a friend of the late Timothy Leary and, in fact, wrote an account for Esquire of the cancer-stricken psychedelic guru's last days.
But this perception needs modification. Rushkoff's latest book, a first novel called Ecstasy Club, challenges those who would construct and celebrate "alternative" cultures. The tale of a group of idealistic young people in the San Francisco Bay area who attempt to forge an alternative society was written before the Heaven's Gate cult tragedy in San Diego, but Rushkoff says he "wanted to show that if people just kind of embrace this postpsychedelic rave Internet philosophy wholeheartedly, and abandon real culture, then they could end up with some real problems."
The novel's characters "slowly learn that, by isolating themselves from regular culture, they fall prey to cultism, conspiracy theory, paranoia," Rushkoff, 36, tells Insight. "And they find out there are people in our culture who are more than willing to take credit for any conspiracy you can imagine."
Rushkoff readily admits that his reputation was, to a large extent, made when he was "called by these stupid magazines some kind of a cyberpundit." But as government and culture embraced new information technologies, he has come to see that a certain distance from that world might be appropriate. "I was starting to get concerned with all the 'cybergurudom' going on, how seriously people were taking cyberculture and how difficult it was for people who had completely embraced that chaos to deal with daily life reality stuff."
Some even have noted with surprise that the book actually seems to support, for lack of a better phrase, family values. And Rushkoff, once seen as a cheerleader for a slacker generation that prefers on-line relationships to flesh and blood, is unapologetic. "If you really want to evolve, try to have a relationship; try to have a kid," he says. "If you really want to have a spiritual challenge, try to keep a job without [violating] your fellows. That's where it is. It's not about going out in some bizarre communal space and disappearing."
While Rushkoff's first book, Free Rides, a study of the use of modern and ancient technologies to alter consciousness, appeared 10 years ago, his public persona really came into focus with 1994's Cyberia, a portrait of the early nineties cyberculture. Rushkoff had noticed that many of his Princeton classmates who had been involved with psychedelic drugs during their college days had ended up in California working for the computer industry, and he was intrigued by a possible connection between an affinity for mind-altering drugs and the new information revolution. The book established him as a marketable media symbol of a technology-inspired culture that still was quite mysterious to the bulk of consenting adults. And this persona has dogged him ever since.
"It's been a hindrance to communication, but it helped my bank account," says Rushkoff. "All I've been trying to communicate is that we live in a culture where the tools of social programming are obsolete. And that kids were the first immune so-called target media." He tried to say this in a furious surge of literary productivity: four books in less than four years.
Following Cyberia was 1994's Media Virus!, which argued that our media-soaked culture, which Rushkoff dubbed the "datasphere," is susceptible to "media viruses" - events, ideas and controversies, such as the O.J. Simpson trial, the beating of Rodney King, or Vice President Dan Quayle's Murphy Brown remark - which quickly spread through the system. That same year, he edited the Gen-X Reader, and last year came out with Playing the Future, a look at "screenagers" - young people raised on diets of television, computers and video games.
In the wake of Media Virus!, Rushkoff was hailed by New Perspectives Quarterly as "the new [Marshall] McLuhan." And as his reputation as a seer of the new information age spread, "Companies, rather than wanting to buy my books, wanted me to come live and say the same things to them that were in my books." But what the media gods give, they also can take away. Rushkoff, uncomfortable in the role of guru, has found himself under attack from all sides of the ideological spectrum, as well as from erstwhile comrades in the information revolution.
Elements of the religious right decry his heterodox brand of spirituality; cybergurus of the sort connected with Wired, the San Francsico-based monthly, have attacked him on the Internet; and the "alternative" left-wing press also has denounced him - often, for the sin of making a living.
Rushkoff says he was nave about the "left alternative cool media" such as the Village Voice, L.A. Weekly, L.A. Reader and Bay Guardian. "Really, they're kids being supported by their parents, making $300 a week writing these things," he says. "And the only way they feel they can climb up is by attacking those they perceive as being higher than them." Conservatives attack him "on what I say," says Rushkoff. "They actually read the book and critique it and say I'm wrong or I'm evil." In contrast, "when the left hits me for anything I say or do because of some media coverage they've seen about me that says I make money - the left, which is supposed to be so media literate; the left, which is supposed to understand that of course there are going to be disinformation campaigns from the right about who I am and what I'm trying to say; the left, who reads something on HotWired, assumes it's true and then re-publishes those wrong facts along with smarmy comments about who they think I am - it's pathetic."
On the left, "there is a conspiracy of failure," he says, "where anyone who we perceive of as having made any money must be evil. That's because the left is based on the idea there's some form of economic inequality, so as soon as someone's got any money, they are part of the problem."
These days, Rushkoff describes politics as "the jockeying for power in institutionalized government structures" - something with little appeal for him. "I'm populist and I'm tolerant," he says.
When the left sneers at Rushkoff, it often has its roots in a New York Times piece that still sets his teeth on edge. While interviewing Rushkoff on his way to a Discovery Channel conclave, Times reporter Trip Gabriel discovered that a corporation had paid Rushkoff $5,000 to participate in an Amsterdam conference on how best to market to young people. Rushkoff admitted that after all the meals and meetings had been eliminated, he actually had done about 40 minutes' worth of work at the gathering. In the Times article, this was transformed into an assertion that Rushkoff was paid up to $7,500 an hour to explain to executives the meaning of "whatever" in the lyrics of dead grunge rocker Kurt Cobain.
It soon became apparent that much of what Rushkoff calls "the reactionary left-wing press" was quite eager to believe the Times, seemingly the epitome of establishment media. "It hurt so much to see [alternative media] saying 'he's a media whore and he makes $7,500 an hour selling screenage secrets,'" says Rushkoff. "I'm writing out-on-a-limb books, on psychedelics and rave culture and counterculture. I'm a true counterculture proponent and I see things like that in the counterculture press."
In fact, Rushkoff says that when he first started writing on these subjects, he was earning an annual $8,000 writing screenplays and political commentary for alternative publications in Los Angeles. Eight years ago, he was preparing to fly to New York to take a job as senior editor with Fame, a New York monthly, when he received word that the magazine had folded. Since all of his belongings already were being shipped back to New York, he decided to return to his hometown anyway, and on the plane wrote out a prospectus for what became Cyberia.
And while the left attacks him as a sellout, the "cybercommunity" - a competitive and incestuous collection of programmers, marketers, editors, writers and critics - also was zeroing in on Rushkoff, who dates this animosity to the publication of Cyberia. "A lot of people in San Francisco hated me since 1993 when Cyberia first came out, because it was a book that didn't include most of them," he says.
And Rushkoff does not seem to miss the approval of information-age gurus. In fact, Ecstasy Club was meant, says Rushkoff, as "a book that burst that whole kind of Wired bubble - this neo-libertarian egomaniacal nonsense over there. I wanted to show people how false all this cyberpunditry really is; that 'cyberpundit' is an oxymoron to the core."
Some in the cybercommunity criticized Rushkoff for writing "traditional" books, but the print and paper hold no terrors for him. "Great writers throughout history have looked for experiences outside literature and tried to express it" in text, he points out. "Now, on-line is just a place where I do business."
But sometimes fun still can creep in. "These kids in Leeds, England, are creating a fake Ecstasy Club Web site," he says. "It's going to be the 'real' Ecstasy Club talking about how they're suing me for writing this book under the pseudonym 'Doug Rushkoff.'" The prospects are enticing, he adds. "I'm going to see if I can create a media virus about that."
GRAPHIC: Photo (color), Rushkoff's advice: Maintain the distinction between cyberculture and reality., By Kozak for Insight
--
Copyright © 1998 LEXIS-NEXIS, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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