Douglas Rushkoff Is Team Human, and Not Ready to Let Tech Win

Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff's new book, Team Human, argues that people need to reprogram themselves to be more resistant to technology that lets us disconnect from others.

My guest today on Fast Forward is Douglas Rushkoff, a media theorist, teacher, and author of some of my favorite books, including Present Shock and Program or Be Programmed. His new book is called Team Human, and it's a manifesto that calls for nothing less than the reorganization of human society. How exactly are we going to make that happen? Doug is going to explain.

Dan Costa: Program or Be Programmed is one of my favorite books and it is also a kind of manifesto, but that was 2010. How has the media landscape changed since then?

Doug Rushkoff: People realized over the last 10 years that that manifesto was right, you know what I mean? A lot of the ideas in that one, that the users have become the product of social media, that we are the commodity being mined, and that we have the choice of how to use these things.

Fast Forward Bug ArtI mean, certainly the programming in school and the STEM and STEAM and all that got launched since that book was around. But, in some ways the message of that book was taken so literally that it's like, "Okay, Rushkoff's saying if we don't understand how these platforms are programmed, we're going to be programmed by them. So let's learn how to program. Let's learn C++ and Java Script." It's like: yeah, you could learn that but if don't understand programming as a liberal art or as a Humanities, then you don't understand what you're programming so it kind of doesn't matter.

You've got to understand the operating system running underneath all of these OSes. And for most of us that's kind of extractive growth based consumer capitalism, or colonialism, or you know, whatever the West has been running on since the Renaissance, really.

Dan Costa: I've seen so many of those interviews when somebody inevitably gets to the question: Should I teach my kids to program? And you're always like, well, yes but I mean programming in a more larger sense. These are feedback loops and operating systems and you're engaging with organizations that have profit motives. And they're generated and they're built to create certain outcomes. And those may not be the outcomes that are good for you personally or your family.

Doug Rushkoff: Right. There's a political economy of media. And it used to be easy enough back in the late 90s I could show kids, "Look what MTV is really doing here." And they could see it and understand it. "Oh, this is a corporation that's trying to alienate me from the adults in my life who care about me so that I transfer parental authority onto this corporation that doesn't care about me at all. And the musicians aren't real and the music's not real and the whole thing is fake. It was easy to show.

Now, all the stuff I want to show people about these platforms is in proprietary black boxes. So it's a lot trickier. Plus, there are a lot of kids out there now if you focus on the technology, on the platform, and say, "Oh, look at how they're manipulating you this way or manipulating you that way." They kind of say, "So what?"

You know, when I reveal that some of these YouTubers are total sellouts doing everything for the ad money, they say, "So what?" I did this documentary, Generation Like, where I interviewed all these teenagers to ask them if they knew what the word sellout meant. And they had no idea what selling out even was as a concept. And when I would explain it, it still seemed ...

Dan Costa: It just a monetization strategy for them.

Doug Rushkoff: Right. So I realized at this point while Program or Be Programmed is really largely a manifesto about technology and how to deal with this new digital landscape, Team Human is looking at it from the other side. Sort of the more vitalistic or homeopathic side, rather than worrying about the disease or the problem out there, let's not even focus on the tech. Let's focus once again on humans. Who are we? What do we want? What makes us tick? What makes us happy? And how do we optimize the world we're living in for that, rather than thinking about how do we optimize ourselves for all this tech?

Dan Costa: So how does one join Team Human? I mean, you start by buying the book. I assume that's required and mandatory.

Doug Rushkoff: You don't have to. It's interesting. Most of the books I've written have been books about something. They're nonfiction books explaining something. This book is meant more as an experience, as counter-programming.

I am using the written word to help people reprogram themselves to be more resistant to the technological programs that are thwarting their cognition. This is meant almost as social, cultural, psychological medicine. It's an experience. It's a reformatting of our approach. So it's a very different book. And, yeah, I'm using every linguistic technique at my disposal to help people rewire their own brains to be able to function in this environment.

So, reading the book is not a prerequisite to joining Team Human, but it sure helps people justify caring about who they are, how they feel, who they know, how they spend their time. And I think a lot of people would love to say, "How could I actually care less about my email than I do about my family? How can I get myself back in the room?" You know, so it's for that.

To join Team Human, all you have to do is join the human race is really all I'm asking. You know, it was a construct, Team Human. It came up when I was on this panel debating one of the famous trans-humanists who was arguing that human beings should accept our extinction and pass the evolutionary torch to our computerized successors.

And I made this heartfelt argument for a human role in the digital future. And he said, "Oh Rushkoff, you're just saying that because you're a human." Like it was hubris. And that's when I said, "Fine, I'm on Team Human."

So, it was meant as kind of a joke that I have to even argue for Team Human in the face of all this stuff. But then the word Team started to mean a whole lot to me. Not Team Human against Team Algorithm, but that being human is a team sport. That it's a social collective activity. And if we try to do it alone through sort of self-optimization, we lose. But if we can reconnect, establish rapport with other people it becomes not only fun but we get power again.

Dan Costa: So what are the actions? Does it start with little things like, just don't check your phone while you're walking down the streets of New York City?

Doug Rushkoff: Yeah, but I would say it differently. I would say rather than don't check your phone when you're walking down the street...I would say use your walks down the streets of New York as an opportunity to become part of the great conspiracy. To find the others who are actually looking up and trying to make eye contact amongst the body-snatched drones.

And they're out there. I've made eye contact with beautiful women, with old ladies, and the occasional business man who's actually awoke. And I mean woke in the fullest sense of the word. Not just the lefty sense.

A fully woke business man walking round who's probably thinking, "Why is everyone on my floor so insane? What am I doing here?" And you make eye contact and it's like, "Dude, there's another one. I found one."

Dan Costa: There really is something in New York, because I'd say 90 percent of the population is staring at their hands wherever they're going. And then there's that precious few who are actually looking around. And you connect eyes.

Doug Rushkoff: I know. And then the more you find, the more you've reinforced it. And then if they've gotten to see you that one day, then the next day they're going to be looking out for other ones.

I mean, yeah. It begins with that. I ask the college kids when I do lectures, I say, "Try to find 10 minutes a week that you could just sit with another person without any stuff. You could have sex with them if you want. You could just play cards. Or just be together, sit with each other, talk about something, you know, without purpose." That's joining Team Human.

I mean, join Extinction Rebellion. You know, what is that? Kind of an advanced version of Occupied. They're mostly in London now but they'll say, "Okay, on this day we're going to sit on bridges." And they just hang out and play music and talk about the climate and reclaim reality. Get to hear little Greta speak. You know, the Swedish girl who's trying to convince her peers not to accept the extinction that most of us adults seem to have accepted already. So there's tons of ways to do it.

But then once you do it you start to see...the obstacles to doing it. Oh, I want my kid to be able to do this but in their classroom they're all on iPads the whole time. And that's a shame because they're on iPads at home. Can I get on my school board? Can I start to influence people to not make elementary school about getting a job?

The other ways to promote the human agenda start to become obvious.

Dan Costa: So, just to step back and look at where this went wrong. You know, Facebook bills itself as a social network. It was there to create connections between you, your family, your friends, and then friends that you don't see that often, acquaintances. You can keep track of them too.

Doug Rushkoff: Well, I mean, it went wrong so much earlier than Facebook.

But if you want to take the Facebook microcosm, where Facebook went wrong was when ... I mean, not that it was really conceived too altruistically. It was conceived as a way for college boys to get laid or to know what girls to approach or not. But shortly after that adolescent period, it sort of decided to become a social network. And the idea was that you would be able to find and sort of maintain your friendships digitally on this thing. And message people and stuff. That was the idea of a social medium.

You could look at this problem two ways. One: He went to Shawn Fanning and Peter Thiel as his advisors. So here's this college sophomore turning to the guy who started Napster, basically a file-stealing network about consumption. And Peter Thiel who was really the originator of surveillance capitalism of the most pernicious kind. And you turn to them for advice about what your network's going to be?

And so, of course, it became the most extractive, automated, surveillance platform known to man. But the real problem was that...they come up with a great idea and then they take all this money. So now they have to pivot their idea and not only do the thing that they wanted to do, but also make $10 billion in the process.

So you look at the kids who started Twitter. Great idea; 140-character messaging app. Cross platform, does everything. And it was making $2 billion a year, which seems pretty good for 140-character messaging app. But $2 billion is not enough when you've got all this investment looking for a 100x or 1,000x return. So being a small billionaire is not an option for most of these kids. They have to become mega billionaires in order to deliver enough return.

You can't do both things at once. You can create an app and become a multi-millionaire. But it's not ...

Dan Costa: It's not changing the world.

Doug Rushkoff: It is changing the world. You can create an app that changes the world ...

Dan Costa: But not for better.

Doug Rushkoff: No, and for the better and become a multi-millionaire. But $50 million, $100 million is not enough for them. In other words, if the kids could be satisfied saying, "I'm going to do this app. I'm going to help millions of people and I'm going to become a multi-millionaire." If that could somehow be enough, we'd be in such better shape.

But no, "I'm going to make this app, get a lot of people to use it, and become a multi-billionaire, and help all of these guys who did absolutely nothing but gave me money that I didn't need because they had a valuation larger than I needed to actually develop this thing. And all them need to become multi-billionaires. I've got to pivot app away from its social service and towards extractive, surveillance capitalism."

Dan Costa: I think one of the interesting things is that we've seen all these different technologies come on to the scene. I'm a big fan of technology, you are as well. But something goes wrong with how they're funded and how they're paid for that corrupts them over time.

Doug Rushkoff: They're overfunded. There's too much capital, right. And even in the Obama area, we were printing too much money and all that money, oh, it was for banks and investors to go into things.

We can't run an economy on passive investment. That's really the problem with capitalism. You've got to create some value other than your exclusive access to bank money.

Dan Costa: Let's talk about the thing that's fueling this. Personal data has been the engine and the fuel that has driven all of these technology businesses, from Uber to Amazon to Google to Facebook. Presumably that personal information should be owned by consumers. By individuals. And yet we have this situation where Experian is selling my address, my name, my credit history without my knowledge, without my permission. And then occasionally leaking it on the internet. And that's all completely legal. Do we need to have some kind of legal structure where we own our data?

Doug Rushkoff: Yeah, I mean it is interesting. It's the sort of landlord mentality but now they're the landlords of you. You're basically renting yourself. You're renting your own existence.

Dan Costa: Well, if you were renting then you'd be getting paid something in return. What is Experian doing for me? I can't revoke myself or opt out of their system.

Doug Rushkoff: You talk to someone like Ralph Nader and he would say you kind of can. Do everything with cash. Don't ever borrow anything. You know, you can. You might not be able to have a phone. You'd have to go to 7/11 and get a burner...and put cash in every week. There's ways to do that. I mean it gets kind of Unibomber.

Dan Costa: It seems like there should be something between going off the grid and living underground on the run. And giving every company access to all of your information from your location to your creditor.

Doug Rushkoff: The one positive in all this is that pretty much every big digital company I speak to and now some non-digital companies, all of them are hemorrhaging money but all of them say, "Don't worry, we've have data at the end of the rainbow. Data's going to be our exit strategy." And the whole Nasdaq stock exchange is supposedly depending on the same data from all of these bankrupt consumers. I don't think that data's worth anything, really.

You know, it's a way of denying people stuff but it's really difficult to create value from that data. And it's going to become increasingly difficult. And even then, you know, cancer stuff and health stuff. They're not really finding out real solutions anyway because the solutions are too ... they're not profitable enough. If the cure for cancer was oregano, we'd never find out.

Dan Costa: Yeah, that would stay secret.

Doug Rushkoff: I've got so little faith in policy at this point. And data ownership and privacy, it's so hard to regulate. I like to say, "Oh, look what Europe did and the right to be forgotten. And your right to privacy."

Dan Costa: GDPR.

Doug Rushkoff: It finally amounts to is this thing I click every time I got to a website that says, you know, "You're going to fuck me up, right?" "Yes." "Okay, let me see." And if you don't click it you don't get to see your movie or read your article or do your thing. I trust them and I don't trust, you know, PCMag.

Dan Costa: You should trust PCMag.

Doug Rushkoff: I do. Of course I do.

Dan Costa: Although, you know, again, we make money on advertising. That advertising's driven by data and tracking.

Doug Rushkoff: It only gets scary to me when my experience of the world through this digital window is being manipulated by the data miners in order to create a more reactive programmed individual. So, I prefer using Google anonymously than Google as me because [then] they know, "Oh, he's an AOC fan. So now we can start throwing this, and that, and the other." And they're going to get me to be a more extreme version of myself. They're going to get me believing in the Russia conspiracy and this stuff that lefties respond to appropriately on these platforms.

Dan Costa: I'm an Android user so I have Android news and I have the news app. It's a logged-in experience. I pick my topics and then I see the stories tailored for me. I see the Patriots update. I see some Marvel comics updates, because they know I'm into comics. I see the stock performance of my parent company. And that's my window of the world every day. That's my first start.

Doug Rushkoff: I know. And the inefficiency of the newspaper hasn't yet been recreated online. And the beauty of the inefficiency of the newspaper was ... Like I don't read generally ... I'll admit this as I probably shouldn't ... I don't read stories about, "Oh, there's a war in Sudan or something." But it's on the front page at least. And before I turn it at least I see there's some Africa war thing I don't want to know.

If I keep swiping it off on my Apple News, eventually it's gone. It's just gone. It's off the radar. Or I got to the sports section. So, yeah, I'm a Mets fan. I want to see my Mets score in the paper. And then eventually I might become an Islanders fan because there's all of these Islanders or Knicks or something else. And I'd at least want to know occasionally that there's a world around my tunnel.

Dan Costa: Filter Bubbles have been around for a while, but I think we're just starting to understand it's a tunnel. It's not a bubble that you can see out of, it is a tunnel that leads you to one place and it usually involves buying something. One way or another.

Doug Rushkoff: Right. And this is the opposite of what we talked about in 1999 at DisInfo Con where Robert Anton Wilson gets up and basically talks about reality tunnels. That people live in these reality tunnels and the beauty of being part of the counter-culture, or doing psychedelics, or having meditation experience is that you see, oh, that's one reality tunnel. But then there are all these other ones. And the one I'm in is arbitrarily chosen by me from my experiences and all.

And what if I try on this, or try on that one, or try on this one? That was why he loved conspiracy theory. Less because any of them are true. But other people's reality tunnels will always look to you like conspiracy theory because they're connecting the dots differently.

But here what we're doing is saying, "Oh, look at how they connect the dots. Let's make them a more extreme version of themselves." So, you know, your kid looks at a couple of, you know, violent video game scenarios and then before they know it they're looking at Isis recruitment tape.

Dan Costa: So we talked about Google and Facebook, obviously. Lot of problems there. The company that I think gets off the hook a lot is Amazon.

Doug Rushkoff: Because we buy stuff from them.

Dan Costa: We enjoy the experience. I get an Amazon delivery every week, at least. And I don't think that's unusual. People who have Prime are sort of hooked on it.

Doug Rushkoff: I know. And it is funny. I bought a new microphone from Sweet Water, you know, instead of Amazon. And it felt like, "Ooh."

Dan Costa: And it took two weeks to get to you.

Doug Rushkoff: It did but it was like rebellion, though. If you buy from the OEM, the original manufacturer is making twice as much money. Years ago, I bought [my daughter] those little Bluetooth speakers for her phone. And they had it on Amazon, [and] they had on JVC for the same price. I called through to the people at JVC. JVC makes twice the margin when they sell it on their own website than they do from Amazon. It's the same as like book seller or something.

Dan Costa: We pay for the convenience. But Amazon is taking over retail across the country. And it's also a data-driven business so they know what your interests are. They have your entire purchase history now, which they can then use to target you with ads and customize the store.

Doug Rushkoff: And they use computers to figure out all the merchandise and the quantity and the ordering. Amazon really is the Soviet Union's original dream of bureaucratic consumerism. Only, they've got better software [and] they're externalizing the cost of unused stock onto manufacturers rather than themselves.

Dan Costa: One of the things that concerns me is that we're at the dawn of the AI world where every company is going to be using artificial intelligence and machine learning to customize these experiences and program its consumer base. And I look on the other side, on Team Human, and I say, "Ideally, AI could be something that could be used for good and used to empower individuals." But I just don't feel like this is a symmetric battle. I feel like the companies and the governments have more access to more AI than consumers ever will, and I don't see that gap closing. How do you see the role of AI when it starts to really amp up?

Doug Rushkoff: I think you're right. I don't think that this is a fair battle, which is why the only way to fight it is from terra firma. You know, I'm a strong believer in the idea that human beings have the homefield advantage in reality. Yet we are the visiting team when we're in cyber space or engaging with AI or being involved in any of the digital techno capitalist system.

What that means to me is we should be trying to spend as much time as we can calibrating to other human beings rather than calibrating to these devices. Eye contact is calibration. Breathing. Smelling another person. These are the way you calibrate your body to use a tech metaphor.

And when you calibrate to the device or to the store or to these artificial environments, it's very different. You know, you could do it for fun at Disney World. But when you're doing it for life, we're going to lose as a species because these systems don't actually value the sustainability of the planet or the environment or the species. The underlying operating systems of the devices and data mining systems is 12th century colonial capitalism.

We are the Native Americans, we are the African slaves, we are experiencing now what all those indigenous people experienced at the other end of our gun ships and swords and things. And it's not nice, is it?

It's a sweeter version of it because they're kind of trying to sing us into a trance while they destroy the ground beneath us. But it really would be the end of everything. So, yeah, the only thing you can do is disconnect, you know. For at least periods of time. Take a digital sabbath, you know.

Dan Costa: What things have you done to play on Team Human, just in your own day-to-day life since you started working on the book?

Doug Rushkoff: One was I decided to get a job. I'd never had a job before. I'd always just been writing. And I wanted to participate in the civic reality. And it looked like the way I could pay back to the civic reality was, you know, go and teach at a public university. You know, first-generation American kids. And rather than going to the top, whatever that might be. Like going and teaching at Princeton or MIT and engaging with the Zuckerberg to-be, with real people. It's calibrating for me. And talking to the kid about what can he do instead of becoming the assistant manager at Foot Locker. What other ways are there for him to work in our society?

Personally, I mean a lot of this stuff sounds new-agey, which is kind of a shame that we've got this sort of negative frame on it. But I mean, I do yoga a lot. I do yoga three times a week. And I know that we look down on that now. Now it's cultural appropriation to do yoga. It's like everything is bad in one way or another. I'm a white guy doing yoga or something. And it's part of the ME thing, I guess, and self and all. But I like the people who are there. It's a small suburban basement yoga class, you know. And we just do it.

I moved out of the city. Well that was partly just because I couldn't afford it. You know, it was a choice.

Dan Costa: There's that too. There's rent.

Doug Rushkoff: Go into advertising or leave the city. I spend time with people. I walk around. I don't use any of the things but I'm privileged. But I don't use Facebook and Instagram and all those things. Now those things are being used, you know, to promote my work. So they're like advertising platforms I guess. You know, on Twitter, sometimes I try to share. I've gotten good at the 200-character pithy thing.

Dan Costa: I believe that.

Doug Rushkoff: So, I'll try to share sometimes. Basically a link, "I've written a 1,000-word piece. Is this sentence enough to get you to want to peek at it?" So I do that. But it's not my social life. That's my intellectual life. That's the war.

I got out and put on my digital armor and go out and fight in that dark mimetic, you know, war zone. But then, no. I mean I'm transitioning back to veganism. I don't know. I'm just trying to be aware. I'm aware of my slavery footprint. How many slaves it took to make this, or that, or the other. I'm not getting another iPhone. You know, I'm on my last, hopefully, my last phone.

Dan Costa: You think you're going to be able to hold on to the same phone after that battery starts to wear down and Apple won't replace it for you?

Doug Rushkoff: Someone will replace it if I got to the dark side.

Dan Costa: You'd go, "Just crack this thing open."

Doug Rushkoff: Yeah, where Harrison Ford went.

Dan Costa: There's certain neighborhoods in Manhattan that you can go and have your phone worked on.

Doug Rushkoff: No, they'd go on Amazon and get the battery and the kit and watch the video.

I'll try. And then, when that dies I've got a salad bowl filled with old phones. And I look at that and I think about how many kids had to go into mines to get the rare earth metals for each one of them. And it's like, "No, when this one dies, I'm going to go back and try this one and try that." Not with screens. There's some with buttons. I mean, you would know. An analog cellular phone—my Audiovox phone—won't work.

Dan Costa: It's probably not going to work. That ancient Nokia with the little nub, it's not going to work.

Doug Rushkoff: I love that phone.

Dan Costa: I mean, there's something to be said there. Think about how many generations of phones we've gone through. And you talk about the rare earth metals that are in those devices, those are in landfills now somewhere in New Jersey.

Doug Rushkoff: Well, or in Brazil or in China where it's externalized to other people. Other people's problem. The things we're developing, even smart people like Elon Musk, it's like, "Okay, so here's an electric car that helps perpetuate an automotive industry that is itself the problem." And you look at the full carbon footprint of a Tesla. Sorry guys, end-to-end it's as bad or worse than getting a freaking gasoline car.

Dan Costa: The benefits may weigh out over time.

Doug Rushkoff: Over time. You know it's just like a printer. We thought the internet would mean less paper where more reams of paper are sold. Or 3D printers, you know, sitting on the curb of the street. It's like, no. And you can have a little phone or a little iPad and it's just externalized all that crap. You were better off with an IBM Selectric. The disposability of our devices is criminal. I'm mean as PCMag, you remember, PC was this big metal thing. And then when something else happened maybe you'd switch out a component. You know, rarely the whole board. You could change it.

Dan Costa: Very few people upgrade their existing devices anymore. The devices aren't built to be upgraded, they're built to be replaced.

Doug Rushkoff: And they're not even built to be serviced. Because if you get your car serviced at a local auto mechanic, that's a drain of potential revenue for the car dealer and the corporation. So they want, "No, you can't get your car serviced unless you have the proprietary computer thing." I used to change my points and plugs myself. You know, it was fun and it was cheap.

Points and plugs. Most of our listeners have no idea what these are. There are these spark plugs and there was a distributor cap that made the different spark plugs go off at different times, which turned the motor of the car. And they were serviceable. You would open the hood of your car and you would get in with a wrench and you would change stuff yourself. Your dad would show you how or your mom. And then you'd just do it and it was cool.

Dan Costa: And now you just by a new iPhone.

Doug Rushkoff: Right.

Dan Costa: Is there a tech trend that concerns you to most, that keeps you up at night?

Doug Rushkoff: Keeps me up at night. I guess the tech trend that keeps me up at night is industrial agriculture.

Dan Costa: We have not heard that one before.

Doug Rushkoff: I know that there's like 30 or 40 years of top soil left because we're managing it in ways that minimize human labor but maximize the extraction of the vital resources from the soil. That treats the soil as it was dirt, which is not. This soil is this living matrix. And to maintain the living matrix you've got to grow food pretty much by hand. You can't just mash it up like we do. Because that's the whole planet's survival at that point.

Dan Costa: It also seems like there's a global issue there where we can't grow enough food for the United States in the United States.

Doug Rushkoff: For now.

Dan Costa: For now. But when you start to spread ... When you look at it on a global scale, everybody's trying to do the same thing and you're serving markets. And the incentives are not to build a sustainable place where you can grow the food for the people that are there locally and not ship things all over the world.

Doug Rushkoff: Right. And they're not doing, you know, crop rotation. Or, you know, they have one crop. And it turns out you don't just want a field of one stuff. The different plants feed each other nutrients, and they support one another and you can't just grow just corn on a field. Even though we have legal mandates now that say, "All your allowed to grow on these fields is corn." That will kill us off.

Dan Costa: Once again, problems of scale applied to things that should not be scaled.

Doug Rushkoff: Right. And that are being scaled not because they it's more efficient. That's another illusion. We think that scaled industrial production's more efficient. It's not. It's just easier to monopolize by single corporation.

Dan Costa: Is there a technology or service or gadget that you use every day that still inspires wonder?

Doug Rushkoff: I mean, the technology that still inspires the most wonder in me is spoken language. I'm becoming aware of language as an operating system. And that's become really valuable to me as I look at all these other operating systems.

I've been arguing to people to think about technologies they use as drugs. You know, so you're on Facebook, you're on Twitter and when your brain is on that platform it's as intense as being on a drug. You know, Timothy Leary used to say, "Before you take a drug, look into the eye of someone who's done that drug. Decide if that's a place you want to be." I mean, look at the eyes of a kid on Facebook and decide, do you want to be there?

But language is a drug too. That's why people go on, you know, vows of silence for a month. Because they realize that language is prefiguring their thought constructs. So now I'm excited by language every day because I'm seeing how effective use of language is a more fundamental path to human programming than the stuff online. You can with words talk to person in a way that changes their relationship to these technologies more powerfully than these technologies can change the way you relate to that person.

So I'm into that. And it just feels like language is ... I understand that language is alienating in certain ways, in subject/object relationships and all that. And it's limiting and we label and all. But I can just grab someone and say something.

Dan Costa: But it's one-on-one?

Doug Rushkoff: It can be. Or one too many. But I can say stuff to people and I can ... I mean, that's the part of what I like about doing talks is I'm trying to help reprogram with people's consent. I mean, they're sitting there voluntarily. I admit at the beginning, I am propagandizing with language now. I want you to try on a way of thinking and I'm going to argue for it. If I disclose that then I figure I'm allowed to do whatever I want.

Dan Costa: So how can people follow you online, hear more of this message, and play on Team Human?

Doug Rushkoff: Well, they can listen. I've got a podcast called Team Human that's growing and has really interesting people on there and we have these kinds of discussions, you know, once a week. And there's the little manifesto, which you can read or listen to it as an audiobook, read by me. I think it's like $9. It's not going to break you. But if you really can't afford it, there's ways to steal it I'm sure. Borrow it. There's libraries. We've still got libraries in this country. We haven't Fahrenheit 451'd ourselves yet. It's a two-hour experience that I think is worth having.

Dan Costa: I totally agree. I love the book. Doug, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Doug Rushkoff: Thank you.