Directing Your Digital Fate: Douglas Rushkoff's Program or be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age

I've heard conflicting opinions about the healthiness vs. usefulness of internet immersion, and have consequently felt guilty about all the time I spend online and been hesitant to immerse myself even more. Rushkoff’s book  Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age has a good reader rating on Amazon and is about the best ways to digitally immerse ourselves, so I'm checking it out.

After skimming this book, I see that the author focuses a lot on telling the reader the way humans work and the way the internet works in order to tell the humans how to make the internet work their way. This is reflected in the illustrations, whose main subjects are always human. Several of the chapters have italicized paragraphs at the beginning, which seem like a sort of abstract of the chapter.

Early Social Proof

When I posted on some social sites that I was reading this book, I asked, “What’s the best way to go about life & digital life in the Digital Age?” I received some responses on Facebook: my aunt and cousin “liked” the status, and my mom gave a couple of pieces of advice to answer that question. They were concerned with protecting one’s digital identity and reputation, with passwords and posting intelligently. While it wasn't quite the angle I’m looking at, her response does reflect the “be careful” attitude my family has about internet activity.

Similar Books

When I looked for similar books on Amazon and Google Books, both search engines recommended more of Rushkoff’s books. Amazon recommended three – Coercion: Why We Listen to What “They” Say; Life, Inc.: How Corporatism Conquered the World, and How WE Can Take It Back; and Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now.” Google Books just included the latter. Present Shock also happens to be more current that the book I’m reading; it was published in this year, whereas the other was published in 2011. It seems to delve further into the “command” of one of the chapters in Program or be Programmed: “Do Not Be Always On.” Other books the engines recommended are also about the psychology of the internet, how business can use the internet and how corporations have taken over the internet; and even Unbored: The Essential Field Guide to Serious Fun.

 Who Cares?

When searching for this book and its author on Twitter, I found several mentions of Rushkoff and his book from people in several countries and of several backgrounds. Usually, though, their backgrounds had something to do with computers or brand marketing. There were also YouTube links to the author’s presentations about the book’s message, and links to a couple of interview articles. When searching on Facebook, I found a fan page for the book which is not very active and has 268 likes (now 269, with my like). However, there were several interesting articles posted, which told me that Rushkoff publicly took himself off of Facebook, and also that computer ignorance is a threat to personal freedoms, since technical ignorance is being exploited in courtrooms. I shared that article on my Facebook page and on Google+. There was also a Facebook page with this book’s name, which mostly had programmer jokes.

On Google+, I mostly found links to Rushkoff’s work but I also found further explorations of the concept in education and even medicine. Recommendations of his work were generally more thoughtful than those on Twitter, since there is more space to speak on Google +. For example, John Wohn wrote four paragraphs about the book, beginning with, “Don't be put off by the title; Rushkoff is not (exactly) saying that everyone needs to be a Java programmer.” I even found a meme.

Aside from giving me more links to purchase the book and visit the author’s web site, Diigo gave me more interviews with Rushkoff and more blog posts about it, including one from a venture capitalist that mentioned that companies are desperate for programmers. Through Diigo results, I also learned that Rushkoff has helped start CodeAcademy, a free web-based site which teaches how to understand and write code.

Formal Reviews

I didn't find a formal review of Rushkoff’s book on our HBLL’s aggregate database, although I did find that he has written articles more than once for CNN. What I have seen so far tells me that he is very respected in his work and has several platforms to speak from. The closest thing to a formal review that I found was an enthusiastic blog-style review and interview article on Wired.com. 

Informal Reviews

The informal reviews I found critiqued the book and mainly found it to their liking. ChristianHumanist.org said that the book mainly asks “ten penetrating questions” rather than giving commands, which I think, based on what I’ve learned so far, is a great way to put it. I was glad to see in another article that there’s more to each “command” than its chapter title and a short summary, several versions of which I have already read in other articles. I also learned that this book won the “Neil Postman Award” (Neil Postman and Douglass Rushkoff are both Jewish and write about technology).

Course Inclusion

I found the syllabi from several classes which use Rushkoff’s book as a textbook. Some were a little surprising; though there were several computing classes requiring the book, it is also required in a writing class, a gaming class, and a major part of the Fall 2013 Introduction to Music Technology class at the University of Florida. One of the computing classes looks similar to a Digital Humanities web publishing class I’m currently taking, and I think including the book in that context would help incorporate more humanities skills in the course. 

Multimedia

There are several YouTube videos of Rushkoff speaking about the concepts of this book and of his other books. They range from a minute to over an hour. On Flickr, someone posted notes that they drew, perhaps at one of Rushkoff’s speeches. A phrase which intrigued me was “Companies should get their friends to friend each other.” Does this mean that companies should get their "friends"/competitors to network with each other?

First Impressions of the Book

On my first read of the book, I noticed Rushkoff's narrative of internet/media/human history. There’s one for nearly every “command.” Sure, the narrative is occasionally meladramatic and oversimplified – for example, “Until interactivity, we were defenseless emotional targets for the advertiser,” (Kindle Locations 293-294) – but it gets his point across and helps put the “command” into perspective.  His simplicity is one of the things which makes this book so accessible.

The point which was most novel to me was his explanation of how digital media has altered our thinking without most of us realizing it, valuing “the recent over the relevant” (Kindle Locations 361-362) and “offloading our thinking” (Kindle Location 382) and mental processes onto our computers and the Web. And by the way, the note above which mentioned companies' friends? It was saying that businesses should help their fans network with each other, to reinforce each others' patronizing of their business.

My Thinking So Far

I can understand why people recommend the book, and I look forward to reading it more in depth. I would like to examine more deeply the digital biases he points out, like the "choice filter" and attempting to be "always on" like the computer is. I'm not sure I agree with him on a section about how the digital world narrows our decisions in general, so I would like to look into that more. I might try to get my mom to listen to the audiobook so that we can discuss some of the concepts our family culture is more against, like sacrificing complete privacy for an online reputation.