265 Quotes by Douglas Rushkoff

It’s not that MySpace lost and Facebook won. It’s that MySpace won first, and Facebook won next. They’ll go down in the same order.

Google did a great job hacking the Web to create search – and then monetizing search with advertising. And Apple did a great job humanizing hardware and software so that formerly daunting computers and applications could become consumer-friendly devices – even a lifestyle brand.

But even if such a prediction were true, our inability to distinguish between a virtual reality simulation and the real world will have less to do with the increasing fidelity of simulation than the decreasing perceptual abilities of us humans.

When digital culture first came along, it was supposed to create more time, by allowing us to shift time around. Somehow instead we’ve strapped devices to ourselves that ping us all the time.

Like civil-rights protesters who sang rousing hymns as they were carried off to jail, Twitterers are bearing witness to what’s happening around them, and calling out into the darkness of cyberspace for confirmation. I’m here. You’re here, too. We are present.

Invest in people who will take care of you when you’re old.

If money can’t be made reporting and writing articles, then professionals simply can’t do it anymore. Unless we adopt the position that the amateur blogosphere is really capable of taking on the role that the ‘New York Times’ and CNN play, then we do need solutions for paying for content.

We’ve been taught that the renaissance was one of the great golden ages of civilisation. The renaissance was not a golden age, it was the end of a golden age.

No matter how much control kids get over the media they watch, they are still utterly powerless when it comes to the manufacturing of brands. Even a consumer revolt merely reinforces one’s role as a consumer, not an autonomous or creative being.