Douglas Rushkoff - Computers for Humans
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0:00 - 0:07♪[Jazz music]♪
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0:07 - 0:09So yeah, being one of the first
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0:09 - 0:14net culture or computers in society writers
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0:14 - 0:19was, strategically, a poor move for me.
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0:20 - 0:22And I'm living proof, though,
you can still survive it, -
0:22 - 0:27if you can get through it somehow,
by answering e-mail more slowly -
0:29 - 0:30It's funny,
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0:30 - 0:33I wrote some notes because I thought
I should be responsible, -
0:33 - 0:36because you guys are real computer studies,
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0:36 - 0:38computer science people,
as opposed to just, -
0:39 - 0:40you know,
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0:40 - 0:45your average,
digitally illiterate audience. -
0:46 - 0:50So I don't really need to make the case
- I probably don't - -
0:50 - 0:54on why learning something about
digital technology is a smart thing, -
0:54 - 0:57because you guys have already
made that choice. -
0:59 - 1:03But something that occurred to me
on the way here, actually, -
1:03 - 1:06that you might not realize as young people
-
1:06 - 1:09if you don't mind being called that
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1:11 - 1:14...is that it's very hard to get
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1:14 - 1:19an accurate sense of the biases
of the digital media environment... -
1:19 - 1:23...when you've been raised inside it.
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1:23 - 1:29In other words, what I want
to suggest to you is that -
1:29 - 1:35those of us who are old enough to have
experienced and consciously experienced -
1:35 - 1:42the shift from a pre-digital media
environment to a digital media environment -
1:42 - 1:43actually
-
1:44 - 1:47understand something or sense something
or experience something -
1:47 - 1:51
about the biases of digital technology -
1:51 - 1:56that is relatively difficult for those
of you who have been raised -
1:56 - 1:58with digital technology to get.
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1:58 - 2:02Right now this is the opposite argument
I made through most of my career. -
2:02 - 2:06In 1995, I wrote a book called
Playing the Future, where I argued that, -
2:06 - 2:08"Don't worry, you grown ups!
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2:08 - 2:11Digital technology is coming
and you feel overwhelmed. -
2:11 - 2:15But you guys are digital immigrants
whereas kids are digital natives. -
2:15 - 2:19So you're gonna speak the language like
an immigrant, they're gonna speak the language like a native. -
2:19 - 2:21You're always going to feel
slightly out of place and unsure, -
2:21 - 2:24and every time you have a hypertext link,
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2:24 - 2:27you're gonna be disoriented
because we're not used to that, -
2:27 - 2:30where kids are going to experience
that very naturally. -
2:30 - 2:33That what looks disjointed to us,
will be a natural terrain for them. -
2:33 - 2:37And they will have command,
don't worry, the kids are alright." -
2:37 - 2:42But as I've grown older and
as I've watched where cyberspace has gone, -
2:42 - 2:45and where our culture has gone, or hasn't,
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2:46 - 2:52I realize that some of my elders were
actually more right about this than I was. -
2:52 - 2:53And in reading all the -
-
2:53 - 2:57finally catching up
with who I was supposed to read, -
2:57 - 3:01when I was younger, McCluen and Ong,
and all the great media theorists. -
3:01 - 3:05I would read about the digital or
the media environments -
3:05 - 3:07and this notion that McCluen had that
-
3:07 - 3:12if you ask a fish about water he wouldn't
be able to tell you what it is, right? -
3:12 - 3:18Because the fish is swimming in the water.
The fish not aware of the water. -
3:18 - 3:21If you ask someone who is raised
in a television environment, -
3:21 - 3:23"Oh, what about the impact of television
on you?" -
3:23 - 3:25You can't say it because you're living
in it. -
3:25 - 3:28You're living in that media environment.
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3:29 - 3:32Likewise, those of us who are living in
a digital media environment, -
3:32 - 3:36it's very difficult for us
to parse its effect, -
3:36 - 3:39for us to feel what it is
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3:39 - 3:42for us to understand the difference
between -
3:43 - 3:45what it is to be a human being
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3:45 - 3:50and what it is to be a digital being.
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3:50 - 3:51And
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3:53 - 3:59being able to parse it, though,
being able to begin to look at that -
3:59 - 4:03What Norbert Weinert used to call,
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4:03 - 4:05"the human use of human beings."
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4:05 - 4:08He was one of the first people to talk
about cybernetics -
4:08 - 4:10I think he invented the word, actually,
back when, cybernetics - -
4:10 - 4:13Even though it got stolen.
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4:13 - 4:17He was really looking at as we develop
a computer environment, -
4:17 - 4:19how will we recognize, what is the difference
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4:19 - 4:21between humans and the machines
that we're in? -
4:21 - 4:25How will we understand how to create
a human, -
4:25 - 4:29or a humanity-encouraging,
digital media environment? -
4:31 - 4:36Now the reason why I think this
is important is because most of my peers -
4:36 - 4:39strongly disagree with this sentiment
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4:39 - 4:42Most of my peers, and call them
the sort of, -
4:42 - 4:45the Negroponte, Kevin Kelley,
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4:45 - 4:48Wired Magazine, Chris Anderson,
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4:49 - 4:55all the way to Ray Kurzwhile
on that spectrum, Clay Shirkey. -
4:55 - 4:59There's this sense, and I used to have
some of it, -
4:59 - 5:03this sort of letter ripped sense
about technology -
5:03 - 5:06that's uncomfortably consonant with
corporate capitalism. -
5:06 - 5:08But that's another story.
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5:08 - 5:09That
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5:09 - 5:12human beings are merely one stage
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5:12 - 5:17in information's inevitable evolution
towards greater states of complexity. -
5:17 - 5:20Right, and they tell this very compelling story
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5:20 - 5:24about the beginning of time all the way
through now. -
5:24 - 5:28That matter has been groping
towards greater states of complexity. -
5:28 - 5:33That we had - atoms became molecules
and molecules became -
5:33 - 5:37sort of these weird pre-proto-life things
which became cells -
5:37 - 5:40and now we have this whole life thing
that happened. -
5:40 - 5:42And life got very complex
through evolution -
5:42 - 5:43and we had people
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5:43 - 5:45And people built machines,
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5:45 - 5:50and machines are just sort of in that big
blue, overtake humanity moment. -
5:51 - 5:52And when they do,
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5:52 - 5:57then machines, our computers, our networks
will be the real host -
5:57 - 5:59for the evolution of information
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5:59 - 6:02and we human beings can tend
to those machines -
6:02 - 6:05or, at best, upload our consciousness
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6:05 - 6:08and then they will continue that journey
for us. -
6:09 - 6:12You know, and each one has
a different metaphor for explaining it -
6:12 - 6:15You know, whether it's Kevin talking about
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6:15 - 6:18what technology wants, right?
What technology wants, -
6:18 - 6:20like it really wants.
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6:20 - 6:23It's not bias towards something, but
it wants something, -
6:23 - 6:25we've made this thing.
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6:25 - 6:28Just as God made people,
people made technology, -
6:28 - 6:31and this child will go on
wanting something. -
6:32 - 6:35Or Ray Kurzwhile who will talk
about the singularity, -
6:35 - 6:40which I'm sure you've all read
or heard about, even on, -
6:40 - 6:44if you find out about it in Vice Magazine
or anything, at this point -
6:44 - 6:47The idea that technology reaches
this point of, -
6:48 - 6:52not self-consciousness or self-awareness
necessarily, but it just surpasses us -
6:52 - 6:55It becomes this thing and can keep going.
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6:57 - 7:01It's a...I don't know, it's a...
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7:01 - 7:05for me it's a discomforting view
of humanity -
7:05 - 7:09but it's also, I would argue,
an incorrect one, you know? -
7:09 - 7:12It's one that is...
-
7:13 - 7:19it's one that is the result of living
unconsciously in a digital media environment -
7:19 - 7:23It's one where you let the digital media
environment dictate -
7:23 - 7:25what you are and how you think
about the world -
7:25 - 7:28rather than maintaining some
sense of humanity in that. -
7:28 - 7:30So, what's interesting to me
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7:30 - 7:34as I look at the history of computing,
which now we have -
7:34 - 7:37and as we look at computers in society,
which is a real thing. -
7:37 - 7:40I mean, 20 years ago, 10 years ago,
when we taught courses like this, -
7:40 - 7:42it was futurism.
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7:42 - 7:44Computers in Society was a course in,
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7:44 - 7:46"What's it gonna be like someday
when people have e-mail?" -
7:46 - 7:49I mean, there were times, and I'm sure
you were in those conversations -
7:49 - 7:52when people like me used to go
to a cocktail party -
7:52 - 7:55or go to a publisher,
or explain to a magazine editor: -
7:55 - 7:58someday people are going to have
their own computers -
7:58 - 8:01They are gonna send messages to each other
using little text editors -
8:01 - 8:03using, you know, word processors,
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8:03 - 8:06and they would literally laugh us
out of the room. -
8:06 - 8:11They did not - it seemed so outrageous,
that - or they'd walk around -
8:11 - 8:13No, you're not gonna have
to implant chips in people, -
8:13 - 8:16they're gonna walk around with phones that
are gonna track them everywhere they go -
8:16 - 8:17they're gonna do this voluntarily
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8:17 - 8:20They're gonna give all their information .
No one believed us. -
8:20 - 8:22But, of course that happened.
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8:22 - 8:26But, the thing to me that's interesting
about computer history, -
8:26 - 8:29if we're gonna follow it from
the history of humanity -
8:29 - 8:31rather than the history of
technology, right? -
8:31 - 8:36Let's not worry about paper tape
to punch cards to tape to discs -
8:36 - 8:39to hard drives to RAM.
-
8:39 - 8:41Let's not worry about machine evolution.
-
8:41 - 8:44But you look at the difference
in people, right? -
8:44 - 8:50If we look at history as the human story
rather than the story of stuff -
8:51 - 8:53then the interesting thing becomes
-
8:53 - 9:02the big switch, I think, is the shift from
a pre-literate to a literate society. -
9:02 - 9:05When we look at the impact of
the printing press. -
9:05 - 9:07Do we talk about it in terms of
-
9:07 - 9:10"Oh, look!
These rooms filled up with books!" -
9:10 - 9:12No, that's not the part
that's interesting. -
9:12 - 9:15The part that is interesting is
people learned to read -
9:15 - 9:17and then when they learned to read,
-
9:17 - 9:20they had personal interpretations
of the Bible, right? -
9:20 - 9:23So we had a Protestant Reformation
with people rebelling against the Church -
9:23 - 9:25So we had the idea of "one man, one vote"
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9:25 - 9:27because everyone has
their own perspective. -
9:27 - 9:29It coincided with prospective painting.
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9:29 - 9:31It coincided with central banking.
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9:31 - 9:34And all of these other, very...
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9:35 - 9:37analogous
-
9:38 - 9:42human inventions that were all about
people having individual perspectives, -
9:42 - 9:44"one man, one vote" -
it led to the Enlightenment -
9:44 - 9:46and all this other stuff, consumerism,
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9:46 - 9:49Industrial Era and everything else.
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9:49 - 9:53When we look at digital technology
I think we have to look at it that way. -
9:53 - 9:55In other words, what is
the difference between -
9:55 - 10:00a pre-literate digital society and
a post-literate digital society? -
10:00 - 10:04You know, I'm over arguing for
digital literacy. -
10:04 - 10:08I think digital literacy is inevitable,
you know? -
10:08 - 10:12I feel like I'm making that - when I...
it's my main talk that I do. -
10:12 - 10:13It's like "Program or be programmed!"
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10:13 - 10:15And I wrote this book,
Program or Be Programmed. -
10:15 - 10:17and we have to learn to program.
If you don't learn how to program, -
10:17 - 10:21you're just swimming blindly
in a sea of information. -
10:21 - 10:24Kids don't understand the biases
of the technologies they use. -
10:24 - 10:25If you ask a kid
what Facebook's for, -
10:25 - 10:28he'll say Facebook's here
to help him make friends. -
10:28 - 10:29But we all know Facebook is
really not here - -
10:29 - 10:32it's really here to monetize
the social graft and all that. -
10:33 - 10:36And then arguing, you know, that
the Chinese are gonna come to take our military -
10:36 - 10:39and the Iranians are gonna take
our banking and we gotta take - something -
10:39 - 10:47any argument I can to try to have schools
teach basic digital literacy in elementary school, -
10:47 - 10:52in junior high school,
so that we're not stupid. Which we are -
10:52 - 10:55And it's like arguing, can you imagine when
they invented text, people saying, -
10:55 - 10:59Oh we're gonna have to learn 22 letters
which is 22 letter alphabet at the time -
10:59 - 11:02we're gonna have to learn these letters
in order to read -
11:02 - 11:05Well, let the rabbis read,
let the kings read, but the people don't -
11:05 - 11:07have to read, do we, we regular people. yes.
-
11:07 - 11:10it's like people are so confused
on this angle -
11:10 - 11:15but we will win this part war.
just as people learned how to use e-mail -
11:15 - 11:20and people decided to use phones
people will eventually, we will teach kids -
11:20 - 11:26how to use digital technology
they won't be completely blind -
11:26 - 11:30the misperception now is that
learning how to program is kind of like -
11:30 - 11:33becoming an auto mechanic
it's like "well I can drive a car" -
11:33 - 11:35"why do I need to know how
it actually works" -
11:36 - 11:39We're not talking about the difference
between an allround mechanic and a driver -
11:39 - 11:42we're talking about the difference between
a driver and a passenger -
11:42 - 11:45a programmer is the user of the machine
-
11:45 - 11:48If you don't understand the code
you're not using the machine -
11:48 - 11:53You are the used You are maybe the customer
but you're not the producer -
11:54 - 11:58And that's where you get to the real biases
of the digital age -
11:58 - 12:01which are easy for those of us who are
around before that to get -
12:01 - 12:06The bias of the digital age,
of the digital era is toward production -
12:06 - 12:10That's why it's digital
where do we even get the word digits from -
12:10 - 12:13Digits are the fingers.
They were ten fingers. Digital -
12:13 - 12:19This is digital media.
This is media that is constructivist -
12:19 - 12:22It's media that you make stuff with
-
12:22 - 12:26The media before digital
was all receive only -
12:27 - 12:31It was all... they were no
Do you still read write-only -
12:31 - 12:35read only files. Is that still existing?
Oh good -
12:35 - 12:38For me, when I understood what digital was
was the first time -
12:38 - 12:43when I was asked to save a file
on the Princeton mainframe computer -
12:43 - 12:45And you had to save a file
-
12:45 - 12:47this is before we used papertape to save
your program -
12:47 - 12:49when you actually could save to a disc
-
12:49 - 12:52And it asked me "is this gonna be a
read-only file?" -
12:52 - 12:55Is this gonna be a restricted file or
read-only file or a read/write file? -
12:55 - 12:59And all of a sudden I went
"Oh my god" -
12:59 - 13:03You mean all of this time they could have
been saving this stuff as read/write -
13:03 - 13:07And I looked back at the media
that I had been exposed to -
13:07 - 13:11I mean, I was a Brady bunch kid
and television was a read-only medium -
13:11 - 13:15television and radio, all the broadcast
medium, all the book, everything I got -
13:15 - 13:19these were read-only media
-
13:20 - 13:23and now I was stepping into a world where
we had read/write media -
13:23 - 13:27Where everything that was put out there
if it wasn't being made changeable by me -
13:28 - 13:32Then it was a conscious choice of
the author to restrict that changeability -
13:32 - 13:38but the bias was towards me being able
to copy that file and change it -
13:38 - 13:42Or not even copy it, just change the file
that was already there -
13:44 - 13:48And that kind of flipped it around
that's when I realized -
13:48 - 13:53"Oh my gosh. if this really works
If digital technology really happens -
13:53 - 13:59Then it will be as big a change on human
society as text itself -
13:59 - 14:02It's gonna be that big a flip
And text was a big flip -
14:02 - 14:06When we got text
when we got the 22 letter alphabet -
14:06 - 14:10We got contracts, we got accountability
We got the judeo-christian religion -
14:11 - 14:12We got linear time
-
14:12 - 14:16We got cause and effect ultimately
-
14:16 - 14:20Text allowed us to put something down
and leave and someone else could read it -
14:21 - 14:22it changed...
-
14:22 - 14:25if you think about the difference between
an oral civilization -
14:25 - 14:28where other people have to be in the room
with you to get something -
14:29 - 14:33and a text civilization where you can
leave it, go and then someone else finds it -
14:33 - 14:35all of a sudden everything is different
-
14:35 - 14:40This shift that we are undergoing now is
as big as that -
14:40 - 14:44and what happens is a -
certainly the last 600 years -
14:44 - 14:48but probably the last 2000 years of
emphasis towards -
14:49 - 14:53sort of a top-down control of
not just civilizations -
14:54 - 14:58but organizations, families and
pretty much every thing -
14:58 - 15:04and religion's changes to
a bottom-up, peer-to-peer conncected -
15:08 - 15:11not just sensibility but organizational
structure -
15:12 - 15:17And it doesn't seem like a big deal
if you are in it -
15:17 - 15:21It seems like a very if you lived
in a world that couldn't imagine it -
15:22 - 15:26The only way people were able to imagine
-
15:26 - 15:30Something like the digital reality before
we had digital reality -
15:30 - 15:32were psychedelics people.
those were the people -
15:32 - 15:35It was Ken Kesey and the merry pranksters
and Timothy Leary and those guys -
15:35 - 15:37getting people to drop acid
so they could see -
15:37 - 15:41"Oh I get it, it's all connected"
-
15:41 - 15:44People would go off to Tibet and hang out
with a Lama and learn Buddhism -
15:44 - 15:46And go "Oh it's all one, every thing is
one" -
15:46 - 15:49But it didn't seem real. It was like
that was some weird spiritual other thing -
15:50 - 15:52It is if you to look at your computer
history -
15:52 - 15:56It's why psychedelics people were hired by
-
15:56 - 15:59Sun, Northrop and Intel
-
15:59 - 16:00In the early mid eighties
-
16:00 - 16:04Because they were the only people who were
capable of programming -
16:04 - 16:07They were the only people who were really
-
16:07 - 16:10them and children were the only one
who could grasp -
16:10 - 16:12this kind of bizarre hallucinatory reality
-
16:12 - 16:15but it was that different
-
16:15 - 16:19And it is why so much of the psychedelic
bandwagon, including Stewart Brand -
16:19 - 16:23who was kind of the publicist for
the Merry Pranksters, Ken Keseys -
16:23 - 16:27it was a big 1960s thing called
the Merry Pranksters -
16:27 - 16:31Which was a kind of...
It was propaganda for -
16:31 - 16:35the acid enlightenment of that period
-
16:35 - 16:37He became Stewart Brand of
the Global Business Network -
16:37 - 16:41It's Stewart Brand who started
or co-started the well for -
16:41 - 16:44The first online bulletin board
and really told the counter culture -
16:44 - 16:48It is okay, what led to the homebrew
computer club and apple computers -
16:48 - 16:52which was, again, a psychedelic invention
-
16:52 - 16:56These were two Reed College acidheads [who]
came up with it on a bong stained carpet -
16:56 - 16:58of their dorm room
- Title:
- Douglas Rushkoff - Computers for Humans
- Description:
-
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
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- Captions Requested
- Duration:
- 01:13:55
jacdez edited English subtitles for Douglas Rushkoff - Computers for Humans | ||
Michel Smits edited English subtitles for Douglas Rushkoff - Computers for Humans | ||
Michel Smits edited English subtitles for Douglas Rushkoff - Computers for Humans | ||
Michel Smits edited English subtitles for Douglas Rushkoff - Computers for Humans | ||
Michel Smits edited English subtitles for Douglas Rushkoff - Computers for Humans | ||
Michel Smits edited English subtitles for Douglas Rushkoff - Computers for Humans | ||
Michel Smits edited English subtitles for Douglas Rushkoff - Computers for Humans | ||
Michel Smits edited English subtitles for Douglas Rushkoff - Computers for Humans |