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

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♪[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 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, 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

they're gonna do this voluntarily

They're gonna give all their information .
No one believed us.

But, of course that happened.

But, the thing to me that's interesting
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.

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?

We had a Protestant Reformation
with people rebelling against the Church

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...

analogous

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...
it's my main talk that I do.

It's like "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.

If you ask a kid
what Facebook's for,

he'll say Facebook's 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.

And then arguing,
the Chinese are gonna come and take our military

and the Iranians are gonna take
our banking and we gotta take something

any argument I can to try to have schools
teach basic digital literacy in elementary schools

junior schools and high schools,
so that we're not stupid. which we are

And it's like arguing, you imagine when
they invented text

Oh we're gonna have to learn 22 letters
which is 22 letter alphabet at the time

we're gonna have to learn these letters
in order to read

Well, let the rabbis read,
let the kings read, but the people don't

have to read, do we, we regular people. yes.

it's like people are so confused
on this angle

but we will win this part war.
just as people learned how to use e-mail

and people decided to use phones
people will eventually, we will teach kids

how to use digital technology
they won't be completely blind

the misperception now is that
learning how to program is kind of like

becoming an auto mechanic
it's like "well I can drive a car"

"why do I need to know how
it actually works"

We're not talking about the difference
between an allround mechanic and a driver

we're talking about the difference between
a driver and a passenger

a programmer is the user of the machine

If you don't understand the code
you're not using the machine

You are the used You are maybe the customer
but you're not the producer

And that's where you get to the real biases
of the digital age

which are easy for those of us who are
around before that to get

The bias of the digital age,
of the digital era is toward production

That's why it's digital
where do we even get the word digits from

Digits are the fingers.
They were ten fingers. Digital

This is digital media.
This is media that is constructivist

It's media that you make stuff with

The media before digital
was all receive only

It was all... they were no
Do you still read write-only

read only files. Is that still existing?
Oh good

For me, when I understood what digital was
was the first time

when I was asked to save a file
on the Princeton mainframe computer

And you had to save a file

this is before we used papertape to save
your program

when you actually could save to a disc

And it asked me "is this gonna be a
read-only file?"

Is this gonna be a restricted file or
read-only file or a read/write file?

And all of a sudden I went
"Oh my god"

You mean all of this time they could have
been saving this stuff as read/write

And I looked back at the media
that I had been exposed to

I mean, I was a Brady bunch kid
and television was a read-only medium

television and radio, all the broadcast
medium, all the book, everything I got

these were read-only media

and now I was stepping into a world where
we had read/write media

Where everything that was put out there
if it wasn't being made changeable by me

Then it was a conscious choice of
the author to restrict that changeability

but the bias was towards me being able
to copy that file and change it

Or not even copy it, just change the file
that was already there

And that kind of flipped it around
that's when I realized

"Oh my gosh. if this really works
If digital technology really happens

Then it will be as big a change on human
society as text itself

It's gonna be that big a flip
And text was a big flip

When we got text
when we got the 22 letter alphabet

We got contracts, we got accountability
We got the judeo-christian religion

We got linear time

We got cause and effect ultimately

Text allowed us to put something down
and leave and someone else could read it

it changed...

if you think about the difference between
an oral civilization

where other people have to be in the room
with you to get something

and a text civilization where you can
leave it, go and then someone else finds it

all of a sudden everything is different

This shift that we are undergoing now is
as big as that

and what happens is a -
certainly the last 600 years

but probably the last 2000 years of
emphasis towards

sort of a top-down control of
not just civilizations

but organizations, families and
pretty much every thing

and religion's changes to
a bottom-up, peer-to-peer conncected

not just sensibility but organizational
structure

And it doesn't seem like a big deal
if you are in it

It seems like a very if you lived
in a world that couldn't imagine it

The only way people were able to imagine

Something like the digital reality before
we had digital reality

were psychedelics people.
those were the people

It was Ken Kesey and the merry pranksters
and Timothy Leary and those guys

getting people to drop acid
so they could see

"Oh I get it, it's all connected"

People would go off to Tibet and hang out
with a Lama and learn Buddhism

And go "Oh it's all one, every thing is
one"

But it didn't seem real. It was like
that was some weird spiritual other thing

It is if you to look at your computer
history

It's why psychedelics people were hired by

Sun, Northrop and Intel

In the early mid eighties

Because they were the only people who were
capable of programming

They were the only people who were really

them and children were the only one
who could grasp

this kind of bizarre hallucinatory reality

but it was that different

And it is why so much of the psychedelic
bandwagon, including Stewart Brand

who was kind of the publicist for
the Merry Pranksters, Ken Keseys

it was a big 1960s thing called
the Merry Pranksters

Which was a kind of...
It was propaganda for

the acid enlightenment of that period

He became Stewart Brand of
the Global Business Network

It's Stewart Brand who started
or co-started the well for

The first online bulletin board
and really told the counter culture

It is okay, what led to the homebrew
computer club and apple computers

which was, again, a psychedelic invention

These were two Reed College acidheads [who]
came up with it on a bong stained carpet

of their dorm room