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" The hours Facebook users put into their profiles and lists and updates is the labor that Facebook then sells to the market researchers and advertisers it serves. "

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" 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

Side

Digital

Look

" We Facebook users have been building a treasure lode of big data that government and corporate researchers have been mining to predict and influence what we buy and for whom we vote. We have been handing over to them vast quantities of information about ourselves and our friends, loved ones and acquaintances. "

" On Facebook, your past comes into your present when someone from your second grade class suddenly pops up to send you a message, and your future is being manipulated by what Facebook knows to put in front of you next. "

Douglas Rushkoff

Someone

Future

" People are seduced by signals from the world, but that is manipulation, not reality. Computers have learned more about us than we've learned about them. "

Douglas Rushkoff

Computers

People

" Think 'Game of Thrones.' In the old days, this sort of show might be considered bad writing. It doesn't really seem to be moving toward a crisis or climax, it has no true protagonist, and it's structured less like a TV show or a movie than a soap opera. "

" A currency designed for long-term storage and investment doesn't do so well at encouraging transactions and exchange in the moment. "

" Your next SMS will probably be around longer, and remain more legible, than your tombstone. For, unlike your tombstone or even your mortal coil, your texts may be worth something. "

Douglas Rushkoff

Your

" Mobile notifications put people in a state of perpetual emergency interruption - similar to what 911 operators and air traffic controllers experienced back in the '70s and '80s. "

" Online advertising may not be much more successful than an old double-barrel, but - like a good spray of buckshot - it makes up for its lack of accuracy with sheer volume. There are 10 unique ads listed with every Gmail message in your queue, each tied to the message content. And a paying sponsor. "

" The competitive advantage professional journalism enjoys over the free is just that: professional journalists, whose paid positions give them the time and resources they need to commit more fully to the task. If we can't do better, so be it. "

" The reason why Apple computers have worked so well over time is that, unlike Microsoft, they don't bend over backward to be compatible with every piece of hardware or software in the digital universe. To code or create for Apple, you follow Apple's rules. If you're even allowed to. "

" Many billboards and magazine ads have resorted to showing isolated body parts rather than full-body portraits of models using or wearing products. This style of photography, known in the industry as abstract representation, allows the viewer to see himself in the advertisement, rather than the model. "

" The first step toward maintaining autonomy in any programmed environment is to be aware that there's programming going on. It's as simple as understanding the commercials are there to help sell things. And that TV shows are there to sell commercials, and so on. "

" We know that people are less open in conversations if the other conversant puts a cell phone on the table. Even if it's turned off. The sign is enough to close the mind and make a prospective client or lover less likely to do what you ask. As people realize this, they'll start putting away phones or turning them off. "

" One argument against open systems is that they become open to everything, good and bad. Like a Richard Meier skyscraper, the anal retentive, Bauhaus elegance of the Mac does prevent the loose ends and confusion of a less sterile environment. But it also prevents fertility. Apple's development must come from within. "

" 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. "

" Since the 1960s, mainstream media has searched out and co-opted the most authentic things it could find in youth culture, whether that was psychedelic culture, anti-war culture, blue jeans culture. Eventually heavy metal culture, rap culture, electronica - they'll look for it and then market it back to kids at the mall. "

" Time has always been used against us on a certain level. The invention of the clock made us accountable to the employer, gave us a standard measure and stopwatch management, and it also led to the requirement of interest-bearing currency to grow over time, the requirement of the expansion of our economy. "

" Social media is itself as temporary as any social gathering, nightclub or party. It's the people that matter, not the venue. So when the trend leaders of one social niche or another decide the place everyone is socializing has lost its luster or, more important, its exclusivity, they move on to the next one, taking their followers with them. "

" 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. "

" Virtual simulations allow post-traumatic stress disorder sufferers to re-experience the events that traumatized them, and then slowly desensitize themselves to their impact through repeated recreations involving not just sight and sound but even smell. "

" 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. "

" I find myself unable to let go of the sense that human beings are somehow special, and that moment-to-moment human experience contains a certain unquantifiable essence. I still suspect there is something too quirky, too paradoxical, or too interpersonal to be imitated or re-created by machine life. "

" No matter how invasive the technologies at their disposal, marketers and pollsters never come to terms with the living process through which people choose products or candidates; they are looking at what people just bought or thought, and making calculations based on that after-the-fact data. "

" 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. "

" If money can't be made reporting and writing articles, then professionals simply can't do it anymore. Unless we adopt the position that the amateur blogosphere is really capable of taking on the role that the 'New York Times' and CNN play, then we do need solutions for paying for content. "

" The early cyberpunk idea was that networked computers would let us do our work at home, as freelancers, and then transact directly with peers over networks. Digital technology would create tremendous slack, allow us to apply its asynchronous, decentralized qualities to our own work and lives. "

" Facebook's successor will no doubt provide an easy 'migration utility' through which you can bring all your so-called friends with you, if you even want to. "

" Just as infinite access to free music ultimately leads to no one making a living at music anymore, free journalism just doesn't pay for itself - particularly not when a search engine is serving all the ads. "

" In spite of my own reservations about Bing's ability to convert Google users, I have to admit that the search engine does offer a genuine alternative to Google-style browsing, a more coherently organized selection of links, and a more advertiser-friendly environment through which to sell space and links. "

Douglas Rushkoff

Own

Space