Program or Be Programmed Quotes

“We are looking at a society increasingly dependent on machines, yet decreasingly capable of making or even using them effectively.”
― Douglas Rushkoff, Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age

“Our digital experiences are out of body. This biases us toward depersonalised behaviour in an environment where one’s identity can be a liability. But the more anonymously we engage with others, the less we experience the human repercussions of what we say and do. By resisting the temptation to engage from the apparent safety of anonymity, we remain accountable and present - and are much more likely to bring our humanity with us into the digital realm”
― Douglas Rushkoff, Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age

“Our enthusiasm for digital technology about which we have little understanding and over which we have little control leads us not toward greater agency, but toward less...We have surrendered the unfolding of a new technological age to a small elite who have seized the capability on offer. But while Renaissance kings maintained their monopoly over the printing press by force, today's elite is depending on little more than our own disinterest.”
― Douglas Rushkoff, Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age

“When human beings acquired language, we learned not just how to listen but how to speak. When we gained literacy, we learned not just how to read but how to write. And as we move into an increasingly digital reality, we must learn not just how to use programs but how to make them. In the emerging highly programmed landscape ahead, you will either create the software or you will be the software. It’s really that simple: Program, or be programmed.”
― Douglas Rushkoff, Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age

“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.”
― Douglas Rushkoff, Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age

“we tend to retreat into tribes, guided primarily by our uninformed rage. And we naturally hunger for reinforcement. Television news shows rise to the occasion, offering shouting matches between caricatured opposites competing for ratings. Elected officials are ridiculed as “wonks” for sharing or even understanding multiple viewpoints, the history of an issue, or its greater context. We forget that these are the people we’re paying to learn about these issues on our behalf. Instead, we overvalue our own opinions on issues about which we are ill informed, and undervalue those who are telling us things that are actually more complex than they look on the surface. They become the despised “elite.” Appropriately”
― Douglas Rushkoff, Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age

“digital media are biased away from the local, and toward dislocation.”
― Douglas Rushkoff, Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age

“But the underlying capability of the computer era is actually programming—which almost none of us knows how to do. We simply use the programs that have been made for us, and enter our text in the appropriate box on the screen. We teach kids how to use software to write, but not how to write software. This means they have access to the capabilities given to them by others, but not the power to determine the value-creating capabilities of these technologies for themselves.”
― Douglas Rushkoff, Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age

“And thinking is not like a book you can pick up when you want to, in your own time.”
― Douglas Rushkoff, Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age