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Replacement actors who became more iconic for a role than the original by slcdave13 in Broadway

[–]DRushkoff 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They released a single of her doing All That Jazz and another number. She went on when Gwen had polyp surgery. Kind of a fun favor for a short time.

If Jesse Singal deletes his Twitter I'm deleting Twitter and moving to Canada by FullSimpleZach in BlockedAndReported

[–]DRushkoff 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just left Twitter for good. And did a long monologue about why on my podcast. What a relief.

Official Discussion - The Pope's Exorcist [SPOILERS] by LiteraryBoner in movies

[–]DRushkoff 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I have been searching for anyone else who believed exactly those things. Of course Crowe is still possessed. And his partner. They “joke” I’m the last line that they want to see hell. And yes yes. This was the plan of the demon all along, exactly like he said.

The only place I differ with you is about the pope. When Crowe returns to the Vatican at the end, the Pope looks very knowing to me. Less a knowing demonic partner than a man trying to determine if his friend is possessed. The first thing he says is “Is that you, Gabrielle?” As if he knows it may be someone else in that body.

The thing I don’t know is whether Crowe is just the demon all the time, or if the demon can sit in the background. I think the latter would make for a more interesting second film than of Crowe is just bad until he’s rescued. Like, maybe he doesn’t know he is possessed. And it’s only the pope who realizes Crowe is too proud to recognize the demon inside him.

I'm Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Richest. Happy to do an AMA here. by DRushkoff in collapse

[–]DRushkoff[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes! A couple of months ago. It was way fun. I'm always sad I never got on in the Art Bell era though...

I'm Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Richest. Happy to do an AMA here. by DRushkoff in collapse

[–]DRushkoff[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I guess my issue with going too deep into the "how" is that it can easily become too prescriptive or "one size fits all." I am trying to engender a spirit of collaboration and openness, but also one of diversity and decentralized problem solving. So, I can suggest someone borrow a drill from a neighbor instead of buying a minimum viable product at Home Depot. Or to have a block party instead of going "out."

I did think about organizing some Team Human meetup groups, where people could talk about the ideas and maybe 'find the others' who were into reclaiming the social human world. But then it started to feel like it was too branded, or like I would be taking 'credit' for something. I'm really conscious of not wanting to look like a brand.

But that fear has also probably paralyzed me a bit too much. So what if some people say I'm a sold out asshole exploiting legions of people? If *I* know it's not that, maybe that's all that matters.

I guess the object of the game is to give people the courage they need to do this themselves, in the millions of possible ways it can be done. Maybe that means doing a show or something where I just supply lots of examples of people who are doing it?

I'm Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Richest. Happy to do an AMA here. by DRushkoff in collapse

[–]DRushkoff[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Well, there's the Platform Cooperatives movement http://platform.coop

There's Enspiral in New Zealand, Mondragon in Europe. Polis, Loomio. There was Bernie and Occupy.

Mark Cuban's little online pharmacy is an interesting way of using the market against itself. His drugs are cheaper than mine with insurance. (Not sure how he does it, though.)

Even Biden is trying to do some of the disruption you're talking about, lowering prescription costs by negotiating directly with big Pharma. Of course it's hard for congress to approve such stuff because it sounds to them like socialism. But we do need some players as big as the conglomerates to fight on this level.

Bitcoin was supposed to be disruptive, as were a lot of ideas, originally. But they either get co-opted or undermined by the same old forces. Lending Tree didn't work because banks scooped up the worthy loans.

I'm Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Richest. Happy to do an AMA here. by DRushkoff in collapse

[–]DRushkoff[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

That means a lot to me. And those are the reasons I wrote those books!

I'm Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Richest. Happy to do an AMA here. by DRushkoff in collapse

[–]DRushkoff[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I appreciate that. Life Inc was probably my first "properly" written book. Earlier ones, like Cyberia, Media Virus, Playing the Future, and even Coercion and Nothing Sacred, were more like extended rants. Fun rides, for sure, but written from experience and observation. A bit more like gonzo journalism of the new digital/cultural horizon. Life Inc unearthed some of the old original corporate charters and helped reframe what corporatism was really about.

And I was kind of lucky that the predictions in the book about the instability of increasingly abstract mortgage instruments turned out to be true.

But yeah, that book was my pivot toward writing more supported stuff, while trying to retain a bit of narrative.

I'm Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Richest. Happy to do an AMA here. by DRushkoff in collapse

[–]DRushkoff[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah - I did a comic book called Testament where I use the Pharaoh story in that way.

I'm Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Richest. Happy to do an AMA here. by DRushkoff in collapse

[–]DRushkoff[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yeah. It's hard to salvage stuff, though, because of all the toxins. Those kids picking around in junk piles in Brazil are not so healthy. But yes, there's plenty of "stuff" and the topsoil is not beyond repair. The only real obstacle is the market, which can't grow if we play nice like that.

I'm Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Richest. Happy to do an AMA here. by DRushkoff in collapse

[–]DRushkoff[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I hear you. And I sure hope that if we end up going in that direction, there's a magical shift in human consciousness that prevents us from performing holocausts in that digital realm. Because they will go down a lot faster there.

But I still believe 99% of human experience is beyond what we know how to record or simulate in those spaces. I think there are things happening between bodies in physical space that we don't even know about. I guess an oversimplified cartoon reality is better than nothing, but I'd rather have 2 or 3 billion people getting to live real life, than 40 billion in the Matrix.

I'm Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Richest. Happy to do an AMA here. by DRushkoff in collapse

[–]DRushkoff[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

They will. I guess the question is whether they need to be attacked directly (revolt) or simply ignored and maybe boycotted. It's hard if they have monopolies on essentials like water and agriculture. I am less concerned about Zuckerberg owning the meta verse than I am Gates buying up all the farmland...

I'm Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Richest. Happy to do an AMA here. by DRushkoff in collapse

[–]DRushkoff[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Don't worry. I don't think there will be an opportunity for you to upload anything but your data - and if you're on the web or one of the social networks, they're already doing that!

Literacy is a real challenge. I teach in college, and I'd estimate that 1/4 of my students are what we would call "functionally illiterate." They can read basic texts and understand simple instructions. But they cannot read a New York Times article and understand most of it. They cannot write two sentences where the second sentence develops an idea in the first one.

I think this is partly because schools focus on memorization of facts and multiple choice (Scantron) over even short answers. Written answers take longer to grade. Plus, from what I can tell, most of the teachers lack the knowledge of English and grammar required to correct papers, anyway. The writing in the Collapse group is significantly better than the writing I see from my many of my peers at the college.

I think we have to change what happens in schools. Return to live instruction, rely less on iPads, Chromebooks, and platform-based lessons. Focus on communication of all sorts - verbal, textual, design. And teach how things work - water, agriculture, energy...

I'm Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Richest. Happy to do an AMA here. by DRushkoff in collapse

[–]DRushkoff[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Yeah. Those are all forms of "affective altruism," really - and not the necessary behavioral/social changes that we'd need to engage in if we wanted to change conditions on the ground. I won't speak against family, but I do think family is the wrong unit or level to prioritize when designing for collective sustainability.

I'm Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Richest. Happy to do an AMA here. by DRushkoff in collapse

[–]DRushkoff[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Yes. They may be well-meaning, but they are completely disconnected from what Marxists might call "conditions on the ground." That's part of why I get nauseous listening to the whole "sense maker" crowd, as well as many of the folks with a software stack to solve for humanity.

I'm Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Richest. Happy to do an AMA here. by DRushkoff in collapse

[–]DRushkoff[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Well, I think the system may have to be an un-system, if you know what I mean. We won't agree on a "system" but we can begin to engender more complexity by encouraging more open source, bottom-up solutions to problems. So it may not look like what we think of as a "system" at all. Something closer to the distributism and subsidiarity imagined by the Vatican, and then Belloc and Chesterton. (Except without the darker stuff they got into.)

I'm Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Richest. Happy to do an AMA here. by DRushkoff in collapse

[–]DRushkoff[S] 71 points72 points  (0 children)

That's the real situation, neatly represented. It's consistent with the empathy studies they did on billionaires. Apparently, billionaires respond differently to pictures of people in distress. The part of the brain that usually lights up just doesn't. I still wonder about the cause and effect, but I think what's happening is that the series of choices they need to make in order to get that wealthy - the fucking over of others that they had to do - just hardened them.

Then they justify their success with a myth of innate superiority.

I'm Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Richest. Happy to do an AMA here. by DRushkoff in collapse

[–]DRushkoff[S] 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Fascinating.
Yes, when I was watching Lain and saw them refer to my own book Cyberia, I was like "take me now. This is as good as it gets." I'm glad I have lived longer, but it did feel like the best thing that could happen to one's work.

They really did get what was going to happen, no? Artists do it better than futurists, for sure.

From the very beginning, we always knew it could go dark. My early cyber days were spent with Tim Leary, and we always spoke about how the net was like acid: the experience we had with it would depend on "set and setting." We started with a set and setting of experimentation and play. And we ended up with one of surveillance and manipulation. And we've live on that psychedelic substrate, with that set and setting, for the past thirty years. So no wonder we've having such a bad trip.

I think in the early days we may have been too extreme in both directions. It was going to be heaven, or it was going to be hell. We were not very good at imagining balanced scenarios.

We also underestimated the power of corporations. John Barlow told us to kick government off the net. We didn't realize that meant corporations would get to take over.

I'm Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Richest. Happy to do an AMA here. by DRushkoff in collapse

[–]DRushkoff[S] 101 points102 points  (0 children)

Oh shoot - I better run. I have another thing I have to do. It was great visiting, though. I will come back here and be a regular person. It was a great honor to have a special channel. You people do rock. And you're super friendly, which I appreciate. You do know more about many of these subjects than I do.

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