What Could Possibly Go Right?: Episode 52 Douglas Rushkoff

Douglas Rushkoff is an author and documentarian who studies human autonomy in a digital age. Rushkoff’s work explores how different technological environments change our relationship to narrative, money, power, and one another. He addresses the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?”

Climate Change and the Attention Economy

The questions posed by the ecological crises – notably the climate emergency – are a series of provocations. These questions drive us back not only to intimate connections between our actions and the fate of the earth and our atmosphere, but to the intimate realm of our attention and capacity to care both individually and collectively.

The Invisible, and Growing Ecological Footprint of Digital Technology

The elements of our lifestyle which we most closely identify with tend to be off-limits to any critical discussion. This is one explanation as to why recent research on the impact of digital technology is missing from the popular ecological debate. But as 96% of British adults have a mobile device{1} the footprint of digital technology can no longer be ignored. From electronic waste to carbon emissions, it’s taking on a life of its own.

Guess Who’s Coming for Dinner

We have proposed a policy that would allow more sales of fresh homemade foods made in home kitchens with reasonable food safety requirements (such as safe food handling training, kitchen inspections, sanitary standards) and with the important condition that only certain types of legal entities could operate a web application or web platform that promotes sales of homemade food and takes a cut of each transaction.

Douglas Rushkoff: “We’ve Disabled the Cognitive and Collaborative Skills Needed to Address Climate Change”

How does our relationship with digital technologies alter our relationship with the future, with the present, and with our imaginations?  It’s a question we’ve reflected on in various podcasts and interviews in this series. One of the books that most influenced me on this was Douglas Rushkoff’s ‘Present Shock’.