Douglas Rushkoff - Computers for Humans

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF talk "Computers for Humans" in the Computers & Society Speaker Series at the Courant Institute NYC on Nov 27 2012.

Users do not know how to program their computers, nor do they care. They spend much more time and energy trying to figure out how to use them to program one another, instead. And this is a potentially grave mistake. Just as the invention of text utterly transformed human society, disconnecting us from much of what we held sacred, our migration to the digital realm will also require a new template for
maintaining our humanity. In this talk, Dr. Douglas Rushkoff -- author of Program or Be Programmed, Life Inc, and the upcoming Present Shock, shares the biases of digital media, and what that means for how we should use and make them.

Additional Camera: Brittany Vanbibber

PUNKCAST 2115

http://isoc-ny.org/p2/4502

Webcast Support: NYI http://nyi.net

♪[Jazz music]♪

So yeah, being one of the first

net culture or computers in society writers

was, strategically, a poor move for me.

And I'm living proof, though,
you can still survive it,

if you can get through it somehow,
by answering e-mail more slowly

It's funny,

I wrote some notes because I thought
I should be responsible,

because you guys are real computer studies,

computer science people,
as opposed to just,

you know,

your average,
digitally illiterate audience.

So I don't really need to make the case
- I probably don't -

on why learning something about
digital technology is a smart thing,

because you guys have already
made that choice.

But something that occurred to me
on the way here, actually,

that you might not realize as young people

if you don't mind being called that

...is that it's very hard to get

an accurate sense of the biases
of the digital media environment...

...when you've been raised inside it.

In other words, what I want
to suggest to you is that

those of us who are old enough to have
experienced and consciously experienced

the shift from a pre-digital media
environment to a digital media environment

actually

understand something or sense something
or experience something

about the biases of digital technology

that is relatively difficult for those
of you who have been raised

with digital technology to get.

Right now this is the opposite argument
I made through most of my career.

In 1995, I wrote a book called,
Playing the Future, where I argued that,

"Don't worry, you grown ups!

Digital technology is coming
and you feel overwhelmed.

But you guys are digital immigrants
whereas kids are digital natives.

So you'll speak the language like
an immigrant, they'll speak like a native.

You're always going to feel
slightly out of place and unsure,

and every time you have a hypertext link,

you're gonna be a disoriented
because we're not used to that,

whereas kids are going to experience
that very naturally.

That what looks disjointed to us,
will be a natural terrain for them.

And they will have command,
don't worry, the kids are alright."

But as I've grown older, and
as I've watched where cyberspace has gone,

and where our culture has gone, or hasn't,

I realize that some of my elders were
actually more right about this than I was.

And in reading all the

finally catching up
with who I was supposed to read,

when I was younger, McCluen and Ong,
and all the great media theorists.

I would read about the digital or
the media environments,

and this notion that McCluen had that,

if you ask a fish about water he wouldn't
be able to tell you what it is, right?

Because the fish is swimming in the water.
The fish not aware of the water.

If you ask someone who is raised
in a television environment,

"Oh, what about the impact of television
on you?"

You can't say it because you're living
in it.

You're living in that media environment.

Likewise, those of us who are living in
a digital media environment,

it's very difficult for us
to parse its effect,

for us to feel what it is

for us to understand the difference
between

what it is to be a human being

and what it is to be a digital being.

And

being able to parse it, though,
being able to begin to look at that

What Norbert Weinert used to call,

"the human use of human beings."

He was one of the first people to talk
about cybernetics

I think he invented the word, actually,
back when, cybernetics.

Even though it got stolen.

He was really looking at as we develop
a computer environment,

how will we recognize the difference

between humans and the machines
that we're in?

How will we understand how to create
a human,

or a humanity-encouraging,
digital media environment?

Now the reason why I think this
is important is because most of my peers

strongly disagree with this sentiment

Most of my peers, and call them
the sort of,

the Negroponte, Kevin Kelley,

Wired Magazine, Chris Anderson,

all the way to Ray Kurzwhile
on that spectrum, Clay Shirkey.

There's this sense, and I used to have
some of it,

this sort of letter ripped sense
about technology

that is uncomfortably consonant with
corporate capitalism.

But that's another story.

That

human beings are merely one stage

in information's inevitable evolution
towards greater states of complexity.

And they tell this very compelling story

about the beginning of time all the way
through now.

That matter has been groping
toward greater states of complexity.

That we had atoms became molecules
and molecules became

sort of these weird pre-proto-life things
which became cells

and now we have this whole life thing
that happened.

And life got very complex
through evolution

and we had people

And people built machines,

and machines are just sort of in that big
blue, overtake humanity moment.

And when they do,

then machines, our computers, our networks
will be the real host

for the evolution of information

and we human beings can tend
to those machines

or, at best, upload our consciousness

and then they will continue that journey
for us.

You know, and each one has
a different metaphor for explaining it

You know, whether it's Kevin talking about

what technology wants, right?
What technology wants,

like it really wants.

It's not bias towards something, but
it wants something,

we've made this thing.

Just as God made people,
people made technology,

and this child will go on
wanting something.

Or Ray Kurzwhile who will talk
about the singularity,

which I'm sure you've all read
or heard about, even on,

if you find out about it in Vice Magazine
or anything, at this point

The idea that technology reaches
this point of,

not self-consciousness or self-awareness
necessarily, but it just surpasses us

It becomes this thing and can keep going.

It's a...

for me it's a discomforting view
of humanity

but it's also, I would argue,
an incorrect one, you know?

It's one that is...

it's one that is the result of living
unconsciously in a digital media environment

It's one where you let the digital media
environment dictate

what you are and how you think
about the world

rather than maintaining some
sense of humanity in that.

So, what's interesting to me

as I look at the history of computing,
which now we have

and as we look at computers in society,
which is a real thing.

I mean, 20 years ago, 10 years ago,
when we taught courses like this, it was futurism.

Computers in Society was a course was a course in, "What's it gonna be like someday when people have e-mail?"

I mean, there were times, and I'm sure you were in those conversations

when people like me used to go to a cocktail party or go to a publisher, or explain to a magazine editor.

Someday people are going to have their own computers

They are gonna send messages to eachother using little text editors

using, you know, word processors,

and they would literally laugh us out of the room.

They did not - they - it seemed so outrageous, that - Or they'd walk around

No, you're not gonna have to implant chips in people, they're gonna walk around with phones that are gonna track them everywhere they go

and they're gonna do this voluntarily

They're gonna give all their information - it's all just - and no one believed us. But, of course that happened.

But, the thing that's interesting to me about computer history, if we're gonna follow it from the history of humanity

rather than the history of technology, right? Let's not worry about paper tape to punch cards to tape to discs to hard drives to RAM.

Let's not worry about machine evolution. But you look at the difference in people, right?

If we look at history as the human story rather than the story of stuff

then the interesting thing becomes - the big switch, I think, is the shift from a pre-literate to a literate society, right?

When we look at the impact of the printing press.

Do we talk about it in terms of, "Oh, look! These rooms filled up with books!"

No, that's not the part that's interesting.

The part that is interesting is people learned to read

and then when they learned to read, they had personal interpretations of the Bible, right?

So we had a Protestant Reformation, with people rebelling against the Church,

So we had the idea of "one man, one vote," because everyone has their own perspective.

It coincided with prospective painting.

It coincided with central banking.

And all of these other, very, analagous human inventions that were all about people having individual perspectives,

"One man, one vote," it led to the Enlightenment, and all this other stuff.

Consumerism, Industrial Era and everything else.

When we look at digital technology I think we have to look at it that way.

In other words, what is the difference between a pre-literate digital society and a post-literate digital society?

You know, I'm over arguing for digital literacy. I think digital literacy is inevitable, you know?

I feel like I'm making that - when I, and I, it's my main talk that I do.

It's like, you know, "Programmer be programmed!" And I wrote this book, Programmer Be Programmed.

We have to learn to program. If you don't learn how to program, you're just swimming blindly in a sea of information.

Kids don't understand the biases of the technologies they use.

You know, if you ask a kid what Facebook is for, he'll say Facebook is here to help him make friends.

But we all know Facebook is really not here - it's really here to monetize the social graft and all that.