Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now

by Douglas Rushkoff

Overview

People spent the twentieth century obsessed with the future. We created technologies that would help connect us faster, gather news, map the planet, and compile knowledge. We strove for an instantaneous network where time and space could be compressed. Well, the future's arrived. We live in a continuous now enabled by Twitter, email, and a so-called real-time technological shift. Yet this "now" is an elusive goal that we can never quite reach. And the dissonance between our digital selves and our analog bodies has thrown us into a new state of anxiety: present shock.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781617230103
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/25/2014
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Douglas Ruskoff's previous books, including Cyberia and Media Virus, have been translated into thirteen languages. He is the Technology and Culture Consultant to the United Nations Commission on World Culture and a regular consultant to Fortune 500 companies, and he writes a bi-weekly column for the New York Times syndicate. He teaches at the Esalen Institute and Banff Center for the Arts, and will be adjunct professor of Media Sociology at New York University in 1999. He lives in New York City.

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Excerpted from "Present Shock"
by .
Copyright © 2014 Douglas Rushkoff.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Preface 1

Chapter 1 Narrative Collapse 9

Chapter 2 Digiphrenia: Breaking Up is Hard to Do 69

Chapter 3 Overwinding: The Short Forever 131

Chapter 4 Fractalnoia: Finding Patterns in the Feedback 197

Chapter 5 Apocalypto 243

Acknowledgments 267

Notes 270

Selected Bibliography 279

Index 282

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“This is a wondrously thought-provoking book. Unlike other social theorists who either mindlessly decry or celebrate the digital age, Rushkof f explores how it has caused a focus on the immediate moment that can be both disorienting and energizing.”
—Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs
 
“Rushkoff gives readers a healthy dose of perspective, insight, and critical analysis that’s sure to get minds spinning and tongues wagging.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
“In this refreshing antidote to promises of digital Utopia, Rushkoff articulates his own well-informed second thoughts. We should pay close attention—while we still can.”
—George Dyson, author of Turing’s Cathedral and Darwin Among the Machines
 
“If you read one book next year to help you make sense of the present moment, let it be Present Shock.”
—Anthony Wing Kosner, Forbes.com
 
“Present Shock holds up new lenses and offers new narratives about what might be happening to us and why, compelling readers to look at the larger repercussions of today’s technologically mediated social practices, from texting to checking in with a location-based service, jet-lag to The Simpsons, in new ways.”
—Howard Rheingold, author of Net Smart
 
“A wide-ranging social and cultural critique, Present Shock artfully weaves through many different materials as it makes its point: we are exhilarated, drugged, and consumed by the now. But we need to attend to the future before us and embrace the present in a more constructive way.”
—Sherry Turkle, author of Alone Together
 
“With brilliant insight Rushkoff once again gets there early, making us confront the new world of ‘presentism’—the shif t in our focus from the future to the present, from the horizon-gazing to the experience of here and now. He points to signs of presentism all around us—in how we conduct politics, interact with media, and negotiate relationships.”
—Marina Gorbis, executive director, Institute for the Future

Editorial Reviews

This is a wondrously thought-provoking book. Unlike other social theorists who either mindlessly decry or celebrate the digital age, Rushkof f explores how it has caused a focus on the immediate moment that can be both disorienting and energizing.”
—Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs
 
“Rushkoff gives readers a healthy dose of perspective, insight, and critical analysis that’s sure to get minds spinning and tongues wagging.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
“In this refreshing antidote to promises of digital Utopia, Rushkoff articulates his own well-informed second thoughts. We should pay close attention—while we still can.”
—George Dyson, author of Turing’s Cathedral and Darwin Among the Machines
 
“If you read one book next year to help you make sense of the present moment, let it be Present Shock.”
—Anthony Wing Kosner, Forbes.com
 
“Present Shock holds up new lenses and offers new narratives about what might be happening to us and why, compelling readers to look at the larger repercussions of today’s technologically mediated social practices, from texting to checking in with a location-based service, jet-lag to The Simpsons, in new ways.”
—Howard Rheingold, author of Net Smart
 
“A wide-ranging social and cultural critique, Present Shock artfully weaves through many different materials as it makes its point: we are exhilarated, drugged, and consumed by the now. But we need to attend to the future before us and embrace the present in a more constructive way.”
—Sherry Turkle, author of Alone Together
 
“With brilliant insight Rushkoff once again gets there early, making us confront the new world of ‘presentism’—the shif t in our focus from the future to the present, from the horizon-gazing to the experience of here and now. He points to signs of presentism all around us—in how we conduct politics, interact with media, and negotiate relationships.”
—Marina Gorbis, executive director, Institute for the Future

From the Publisher

Present Shock is one of those invaluable books that make sense of what we already half-know.

The New York Times - Janet Maslin

Whether or not readers are familiar with the concept of presentism—the theory that society is more focused on the immediacy of the moment in front of them (actually more specifically on the moment that just passed) than the moment before or, perhaps more importantly, the future—they’ve certainly felt the increasing pressure of keeping up with various methods of communication, be it texting, Web surfing, live interactions, or a litany of other media for staying “connected.” Using Alvin Toffler’s concept of “future shock” as a jumping-off point, media theorist Douglas Rushkoff (Cyberia; Get Back in the Box; Media Virus; etc.) deftly weaves in a number of disparate concepts (the Home Shopping Network, zombies, Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns, Internet mashups, hipsters’ approximation of historical ephemera as irony, etc.) to examine the challenge of keeping up with technological advances as well as their ensuing impact on culture and human relations in a world that’s always “on.” By highlighting five areas (the rise of moronic reality TV; our need to be omnipresent; the need to compress time in order to achieve our goals; the compulsion to connect unrelated concepts in an effort to make better sense of them; and a gnawing sense of one’s obsolescence), Rushkoff gives readers a healthy dose of perspective, insight, and critical analysis that’s sure to get minds spinning and tongues wagging. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Media theorist Rushkoff (Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age, 2011, etc.) returns with a dire prognosis of society's ills. Though exaggerated, many of the author's assertions can be summed up thusly: Technology has ruined everything, and nothing is as good as it used to be. The book is divided into five overarching concepts of how modern life has changed for the worse, with wide-reaching ideas like narrative collapse (TV shows and movies exhibit an "utter lack of traditional narrative goals") and "digiphrenia" (in which dividing attention between online and in-person modes leads to a "temporal disconnection" bordering on mental disorder). Rushkoff does offer a few noteworthy theories--e.g., that our collective interest in post-apocalyptic scenarios stems from a deep desire to return to a simpler life. However, the author repeatedly makes reference to outdated cultural touchstones--e.g., an entire page on the "dangerously mindless" show Beavis & Butthead, which last aired in 1997--while most of his conclusions are overblown. Perhaps the best example of both problems occurs in one early chapter, in which Rushkoff recalls William Hung, the man who sang "She Bangs" at a cringeworthy 2004 American Idol audition and enjoyed a few moments of fame. Rushkoff draws a direct line from how much of America had a laugh at Hung's expense to the Milgram experiment, in which social psychologist Stanley Milgram asked study participants to purportedly administer ever-increasing electric shocks to an unwilling victim. Rushkoff claims that in today's society, "[t]he question is not how much deadly voltage we can apply, but how shamefully low can we go?" Sure to be loved by readers who enjoy telling kids to get off their damn lawn, but unlikely to gain traction with a wider audience.

Kirkus Reviews