Remember when those CD-ROMs from AOL came in the mail almost every day? The company was considered ubiquitous, invincible. Former AOL CEO Steve Case was no less a genius than Mark Zuckerberg. Douglas Rushkoff More Quotes by Douglas Rushkoff More Quotes From Douglas Rushkoff A currency designed for long-term storage and investment doesn't do so well at encouraging transactions and exchange in the moment. Douglas Rushkoff investment moments long As popular culture becomes more presentist, we move away from entertainment as the vicarious experience of a narrative - as watching someone else's story - and much more toward enacting one's own story. Moving away from myths and toward fantasy role-playing games, away from movies and toward videogames. Douglas Rushkoff role-playing playing-games moving Beyond the hype, style, and speculation, the truth is that the iPad is really just another tablet device. A really big PDA, where a touchscreen does what a laptop's keyboard used to do. Douglas Rushkoff pda hype ipads Brains are tricky and adaptable organs. For all the 'neuroplasticity' allowing our brains to reconfigure themselves to the biases of our computers, we are just as neuroplastic in our ability to eventually recover and adapt. Douglas Rushkoff neuroplasticity computer brain Children are being adultified because our economy is depending on them to make purchasing decisions. So they're essentially the victims of a marketing and capitalist machine gone awry. Douglas Rushkoff marketing decision children Digital media are biased toward replication and storage. Our digital photos practically upload and post themselves on Facebook, and our most deleted e-mails tend to resurface when we least expect it. Yes, everything you do in the digital realm may as well be broadcast on prime-time television and chiseled on the side of the Parthenon. Douglas Rushkoff media may television Digital technology is both arousing and distancing. We don't look at the users on the other side as people. They aren't - they're just usernames, Facebook photos and Twitter handles. Douglas Rushkoff technology people looks Digital time does not flow; it flicks. Like any binary, discrete decision, it is either here or there. In contrast to our experience of the passing of time, digital time is always in the now, or in no time. It is still. Poised. Douglas Rushkoff flow decision doe Every new computer program is basically doing some task that a person used to do. But the computer usually does it faster, more accurately, for less money, and without any health insurance costs. Douglas Rushkoff cost tasks doe Everyone knows, or should know, that everything we type on our computers or say into our cell phones is being disseminated throughout the datasphere. And most of it is recorded and parsed by big data servers. Why do you think Gmail and Facebook are free? You think they're corporate gifts? We pay with our data. Douglas Rushkoff phones cells thinking Everything we do in the digital realm - from surfing the Web to sending an e-mail to conducting a credit card transaction to, yes, making a phone call - creates a data trail. And if that trail exists, chances are someone is using it - or will be soon enough. Douglas Rushkoff soon-enough data phones Facebook has never been merely a social platform. Rather, it exploits our social interactions the way a Tupperware party does. Facebook does not exist to help us make friends, but to turn our network of connections, brand preferences and activities over time - our 'social graphs' - into money for others. Douglas Rushkoff connections party doe Fantasy sports went a long way toward developing the sabermetrics formulas used not only by oddsmakers but general managers in hiring players. So the amateur fantasists ended up creating some of the algorithms that Oakland GM Billy Bean's statisticians used to win games with less salary money available for star players. Douglas Rushkoff stars winning sports Files on iTunes - and thus iPods - are incompatible with everything else. Applications on iPhones may only be sold and uploaded through the iPhone store - giving Apple control over everything people put on to the devices they thought they owned. Douglas Rushkoff ipods apples iphone For Google, the problem with being a free, abundant, and rather infinite set of services is that it's hard to create much of a stir about anything. There are so many major software service options under the 'more' menu on the Gmail page that they've had to go and add a final item called 'even more.' Douglas Rushkoff google finals add As Apple continues to release new styles of netbooks, laptops, and even desktops with untold movie-watching and game-playing capabilities, I wouldn't be surprised to see the iPhone operating system running on them - and the Macintosh eventually becoming a thing of the past. Douglas Rushkoff iphone running past As a writer and sometime activist who needs to promote my books and articles and occasionally rally people to one cause or another, I found Facebook fast and convenient. Though I never really used it to socialize, I figured it was OK to let other people do that, and I benefited from their behavior. Douglas Rushkoff book people needs As a professional journalist who nonetheless champions a 'people's' Internet, I am happy to compete against the thousands of amateur bloggers out there reporting and commenting on the same stories I do. Douglas Rushkoff champion stories people By turning every Yahoo search box into a Bing box, Microsoft may have bought itself the exposure it needs to be the next Google. Douglas Rushkoff google microsoft needs I think the only way to behave is as if nothing is private. And then fight to make what you care about legal and acceptable. Douglas Rushkoff care fighting thinking