Present Shock

by Douglas Rushkoff, Kevin T. Collins (Narrator)

"If the end of the twentieth century can be characterized by futurism, the twenty-first can be defined by presentism."
This is the moment we've been waiting for, explains award-winning media theorist Douglas Rushkoff, but we don't seem to have any time in which to live it. Instead we remain poised and frozen, overwhelmed by an always-on, live-streamed reality that our human bodies and minds can never truly inhabit. And our failure to do so has had wide-ranging effects on every aspect of our lives.
People spent the twentieth century obsessed with the future. We created technologies that would help connect us faster, gather news, map the planet, compile knowledge, and connect with anyone, at anytime. 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.
Rushkoff weaves together seemingly disparate events and trends into a rich, nuanced portrait of how life in the eternal present has affected our biology, behavior, politics, and culture. He explains how the rise of zombie apocalypse fiction signals our intense desire for an ending; how the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street form two sides of the same post-narrative coin; how corporate investing in the future has been replaced by futile efforts to game the stock market in real time; why social networks make people anxious and email can feel like an assault. He examines how the tragedy of 9/11 disconnected an entire generation from a sense of history, and delves into why conspiracy theories actually comfort us.
As both individuals and communities, we have a choice. We can struggle through the onslaught of information and play an eternal game of catch-up. Or we can choose to live in the present: favor eye contact over texting; quality over speed; and human quirks over digital perfection. Rushkoff offers hope for anyone seeking to transcend the false now.
Absorbing and thought-provoking, Present Shock is a wide-ranging, deeply thought meditation on what it means to be human in real-time.

Genres: Nonfiction, Technology, Sociology, Psychology, Philosophy, Science, Cultural

Audiobook

First published March 21, 2013

About the author

Douglas Rushkoff is a New York-based writer, columnist and lecturer on technology, media and popular culture.

Reviews

[Meg · Rating 2 out of 5]

I should like Douglas Rushkoff. I have a feeling that in fact we agree over a great many things, and share many of the same concerns. But every time I try to read him I fail, and often quit before the piece is even halfway through. With this book, I finally understand why: his ideas are interesting, but I don't think he knows how to structure an argument well. His writing is full of many of the tricks of rhetoric - the sentences sound as though they should be persuasive - but they're never implemented fully, the points never stacking up in a way that makes them memorable or lasting. (I find this inability/unwillingness to complete an argument in a linear fashion somewhat amusing in a book lamenting the alleged disappearance of linear narrative.)

[Tracy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I agree with other reviewers that this book is disjointed, and it's obvious that it took many years to write (I noted, for example, that many of the illustrations in the first chapter are more than a decade old). Despite those elements, I do think this book is worth reading and its ideas worth thinking about, whether or not one ultimately agrees with the author. The basic topics:

1. Narrative Collapse - Pop culture becomes more now-ist and self-referential beginning in the late 1980s-early 1990s (The Simpsons, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Seinfeld). Reality shows and the 24-hour news cycle demo other aspects of this phenomenon. Rushkoff writes about Occupy Wall Street also, but, perhaps because this movement was still so new at the time of publishing that we don't yet know the outcomes, I found this the most disconnected component of this chapter.
2. Digiphrenia -- In trying to keep up with everything, we lose perspective. "The quest for digital omniscience, though understandable, is self-defeating" (p. 75). I enjoyed Rushkoff's discussion of time as a technology in this chapter, particularly as the functioning of digital time does not align with the needs of the human's chronobiology. With this understanding, we can select uses of technology that help us rather than harm us.
3. Overwinding -- Another chapter about time. Living quickly loses sight of longer time horizons, and different kinds of time (Rushkoff discusses chronos versus kairos). Sometimes we do need to store time for the future (think of athletes who practice the same moves over and over in order to be able to execute them without a lot of conscious effort during competition). Sometimes we treat something as permanent that is more properly regarded as fleeting (for example, "catching up" with Twitter feeds is a form of living in the past), or something as fleeting that contains more substance. I found this to be the most interesting chapter of the book, and my notes here are only partial.
4. Fractalnoia -- The ability to connect anything with anything as a means of satisfying "our need to find patterns in a world with no enduring story lines....We can't create context in time, so we create it through links" (p. 199-200). This chapter contained an interesting discussion of corporate communications approaches and how those are eroded in a world in which feedback comes continuously and from all sides at once. On the positive side, this ability to link can create communities in which everyone feels welcome to participate in the community's development. Will living networks replace linear histories of the past? Rushkoff thinks so. The individual's limited vision is the failure of fractalnoia, seeing connections as only having to do with him- or herself, while "...in a fractal landscape, nothing is personal." (p. 241)
5. Apocalypto -- fears of transcending humanity, destruction of the human, union in the singularity. While the ideas are intriguing, on the whole I found this to be the least developed, and perhaps least convincing, chapter in the book.

All in all, I'm glad I read this, and it complements other readings I've been doing about the value of Sabbath practices and about engaging mindfully with technology. What I most appreciated about this book is the many ways in which Rushkoff brings in elements of larger culture (although he's heaviest on corporate culture). As he notes toward the end, "It is not you or I or the information that's so different, but the media and culture around us all." (p. 265) I would argue that we are changed by this culture, and so are different people than we would be in a different time and place, but perhaps that's a topic best left to another book.

[Kevin O'Donnell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Gave up on this midway through the second chapter, which is actually more than a third through the whole thing. I almost never quit books. (Perhaps because I am too selective up front?) This one, however, I gladly spurn.

First 100 pages were okay but rambling, disjointed, speculative, grabbag, etc.

Eventually though I couldn't stomach how much attention was being paid to pseudoscientific blather. And all of it sort of glossed over with an air of respectability. I lost the trust I had in the author. With it went any remnants of goodwill.

Here's a brief test instead of me dissecting a handful of pages: go to somaspace.org, read through some of the materials if you want (make sure to note that the friendly doctor—read chiropractor, a detail Rushkoff brazenly skips over—will, "if you really want," share his resume if you contact him), then think about how you would describe the website's owner, author, and subject: In what light? With respect to what authorities? As evidence/support of what broader argument/theory that you're making? (Btw you're a "media theorist" in this scenario.) How might you position him in the landscape of evidence-based medicine if not science writ large?

Now think about how you would want someone to describe him to you if they were given the privilege to opine freely, without interruption, and with only scattershot attempts at a thesis for the two-plus hours you've so far given them. When the subject is already pretty far afield from what you expected and its treatment less than rigorous. Remember, this is the first firsthand pseudo-expert you've brought in to make a point.

Done? Rushkoff introduces Filippi with nary a trace of irony as the "founder" of that site. (I founded my personal homepage, too!) He describes him as "putting... together... a comprehensive approach to the brain over time." As "building on his predecessors' work" by "analyzing the biochemical impact of seasonal and lunar rhythms." Etc.

Of course, given just a minute of sleuthing, you find that this man isn't a biochemist, nor a researcher, nor a scientist, nor even a doctor as we might commonly refer to one. He's certainly not a doctor in the fashion you're led to believe. Probably never took an introductory course in biochemistry. Probably couldn't pass one. When you turn to the endnote and see that the next few pages concerning the man and his study are all based on personal conversations over a couple of months last year, you begin to doubt either the sincerity of the author or his ability to discern between legitimate endeavorers and cranks, between what matters and what doesn't.

Then you return the book to the library.

(To partially change the subject: In order to gird myself for quitting, I tried to find what I'd previously heard about Tyler Cowen's prodigious and ruthless reading habits, particularly how bluntly he dismisses books he doesn't like. See:

When to Stop Reading a Book

As well as:

"Cowen's first rule of reading is as follows: You need not finish. He takes up books with great hope and no mercy, and when he is done—sometimes after five minutes—he abandons them in public, an act he calls ‘liberation.’"

Tyler Cowen, America's Hottest Economist

I vaguely recall him also destroying a book or two as well.)

[Dragos Pătraru · Rating 5 out of 5]

Plecând de la ideea de future shock, a lui Alvin Tofler, Douglas Rushkoff, unul dintre cei mai buni teoreticieni media de azi, ne arată în cartea Present Shock cât de dependenți am devenit de clipa prezentă și de gratificarea pe care trebuie să o primim. Telefonul ne permite să facem ceva ce strămoșii noștri, la naiba, ceea ce nici măcar bunicii noștri nu visau că s-ar putea face: să fim în mai multe locuri în același timp. Și la pachet cu asta vin și multiple identități pe care ni le facem, de la profilul de FIFA, pe PS4, până la contul de pe tik-tok sub al țâșpelea pseudonim, despre care doar noi știm. Sigur, asta poate fi și al dracului de confuz.
Cum arată prezentul? Dacă am fi jucători de tenis, explică Rushkoff, ar fi ca și cum zeci, sute de mingi ar veni către noi, aruncate de o mașină folosită pentru antrenamente. Nu ai cum să lovești decât câteva. Ei bine, cum reușim totuși să ne descurcăm într-o astfel de lume, în care tehnologia ne distrage permanent atenția de la ce este important, ne distorsionează până și propria identitate și ne deformează felul în care percepem timpul? Păi, asta e problema, că starea asta de șoc, fragmentarea a tot ceea ce ne înconjoară și nevoia de gratificare ne fac mult mai mult rău decât bine, dacă nu învățăm să folosim tehnologia în avantajul nostru.

[Casey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A word of warning: if you read this book, you're going to have to accept that media theorists do not have to present empirical evidence to argue a point. Examples here are cherry-picked from a vast landscape of television shows and websites and films, without mention of base rates, variance, statistical significance, and other figures that scientific types (such as myself) rely on to make sense of data. Of course, lack of any real evidence doesn't stop Rushkoff from making claims about causality. If only doing science were so easy.

Bottom line: there's no science in this book, despite what goodreads might lead to you believe. Indeed, the library of congress shelved it under "technology - social aspects" and "technology - philosophy." (If the library of congress had a heading for "curmudgeony polemics against kids these days" it might go under that too, although Rushkoff loves technology enough that no LOC librarian worth his or her salt would file this under "luddite.")

Anyway, it's best to get over the lack of data, because Rushkoff compellingly argues that our post-narrative, post-structuralist, post-everything, post-nothing world is always going on in the present, even as none of us really live in the moment.

An aside (in a post-narrative world, my writing is not required to be linear, or even informative: the most important thing is to capture attention): I'm often impressed by my own facility with pop-culture references in popular media. I don't have cable, I spend most of my summer actively avoiding invitations to inane sequels to even more inane blockbusters, and I couldn't pick of-the-moment pop hacks like Justin Bieber or Adele out of a lineup. But, "meta" shows like Community seem to be aimed at me, because I do know a Goodfellas reference or a parody of a narrative trope when I see one. In creating a corps of viewers who won't bother with the history of cinema (or music, or art, or anything), who stare blankly when they hear names like "Ingmar Bergman" or "David O. Selznick" or "Laura Palmer," popular satirical television shows have, ironically, selected for exactly the audience that won't get the jokes.

Back to the book. Rushkoff's argument is presented in a few broad strokes, which resemble the colorful, self-contained rectangles of a Mondrian painting. He jumps all over the place, talking about investment banking, post-narrative collapse, digiphrenia (being more than one digital being at once), Facebook, conspiracy theorists, and the apocalypse. I was surprised to hear about the benefits of barter economies and alternative currencies, although I'm not sure how that fits in with anything. The book is about as rambling as this review, albeit more successful at conveying actual information.

What's the solution to present shock? Perhaps the 21st century version of Walden consists of simply unplugging the modem, switching the iPhone to "do not disturb," cracking open a book, and listening to Highway 61 Revisited on vinyl. Maybe reconnecting with nature means strolling along Clark street without listening to music through headphones. Just typing that makes the future seem bleak, not least because I know few people would deign to exist apart from the electronic crutch of Facebook profiles and Twitter feeds. The only solution I can offer is a personal refusal to become a blankly-buzzing drone.

If you're interested in this book, you may want to check out this interview with the author on the Joe Rogan Experience, which I found rather enjoyable.

[Don Tapscott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Back in the BlackBerry's heyday, a new habit in restaurants became known as the “BlackBerry prayer.” Those at the table would hold their BlackBerrys in their laps, trying to inconspicuously respond to a steady stream of e-mails and texts. No matter how engaging the table conversation, the BlackBerry offered the potential of a different and more interesting topic.

Today, the prayers still happen, but they now occur non-stop with iPhones and Android devices. Rather than savouring our current place and time, we are in constant quest for something better.

The obsession with “now” is the topic of Present Shock, the new book from well-known media theorist Douglas Rushkoff. He is no Luddite; rather, Rushkoff is an on-the-edge thinker, and sometimes his arguments are met with incredulity. His book, Present Shock, is a must-read rejoinder to Alvin Toffler's pioneering 1970 bestseller Future Shock. Toffler exhorted his readers to become adept at “how to predict.” Not having this skill amounted to “a form of functional illiteracy in the contemporary world.” We “all became futurists in one way or another,” Rushkoff writes, “peering around the corner for the next big thing, and the next one after that. But then we actually got there. Here. Now. We arrived in the future.” We are experiencing “our first true symptoms of present shock.”

While technology is the enabler, present shock occurs in all aspects of our life. He divides “presentism” into five categories, each one a typical Rushkoffian neologism:

Narrative Collapse: Immediacy trumps accuracy. Around-the-clock news channels force public figures to respond to every iteration of an issue. Simplistic solutions (like those offered by the Tea Party) are favoured because they are not bogged down with facts.

Digiphrenia: Technology allows us to be in a number of locations at the same time, often with stressful and unhealthy consequences. Rushkoff cites the extreme example of U.S. pilots in Nevada remotely flying armed drones in Afghanistan that fire air-to-ground missiles to kill insurgents and any civilians who have the bad luck to be nearby. These pilots then drive to their house to have dinner with the spouse and kids and help with homework.

Overwinding: We are under intense pressure to seize the advantage of the moment and act now. One of his many examples is the shopping frenzy of Black Friday in the United States following the Thursday Thanksgiving. Big retailers would open at 9 a.m. Friday, then 6 a.m., then 4 a.m., then midnight, and now late on Thursday evening. The creeping Black Friday has become a powerful symbol of the American mindset.

Fractalnoia: The now-rampant effort to impose an interpretation of one set of facts on another dissimilar set of facts. Dozens of websites and YouTube videos assert linkages and conspiracies from the use of weather balloons and the military, economy, natural disasters and jet emissions. These “make up just a tiny fraction of the so-called conspiracy theories gaining traction online and in other media, connecting a myriad of loose ends, from 9/11 and Barack Obama's birthplace to the Bilderberg Group and immunization.”

Apocalypto: The truly depressing American obsession with the notion of imminent doom, whether born-again Christians with visions of Rapture, advocates of Mayan calendar doom or followers of Kurzweil's concept of Singularity. Rushkoff asks us not to abandon all hope, but step back and discuss more rational approaches to what ails our society.

The pleasure of reading Present Shock is that so many of Rushkoff's examples ring true, and seem glaringly obvious once put to paper. The scope of the book is ambitious, and fortunately, he accompanies his observations with suggestions to help us all cope in the ever-present world.

I have long argued that, because of enormous leaps in technology, the values we hold are coming into question. More than ever before, we need to step back and consciously design our lives. We need to decide explicitly what we stand for and whether we are the slave or the master of the new technologies.

On the home front, most families muddle through this new networked and open world, stumbling from decision to decision or crisis to crisis without an overarching strategy. All of us should be applying principles of design to our family and life. Make conscious choices about how our families will function and what we believe in. Harness the power of new technologies and transparency for the good – design them rather than having them control you.

[Stan Feckless · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ironically, Rushkoff’s expository style in Present Shock is often unfocused, fragmented, and seems to suffer from a diminished attention span just like the social phenomena that he is attempting to critique. Some of the arguments presented are intriguing at first blush, but end up disappointing because they are never fully explored or supported. The book ends up reading like a hyper-linked miscellany of conspicuous media and technology stories.

[Erika · Rating 4 out of 5]

67 pages into this book and my mind is blown- Rushkoff draws clear connections between changing media practices, the loss of a narrative structure in society, an increase in fear within the media, the Occupy Wall street movement, and gaming culture. Seemingly unrelated issues come together in a panorama of understanding . Looking forward to the delights in the rest of the book.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's hard to say what Present Shock is exactly, both in the flattering way that it packs a lot in and in the negative sense that it’s lacking a lot of precision. It's not quite a polemic, but it’s more provocational than Alvin Toffler's drier Future Shock. In the '90s, Ruskoff says, we were all leaning forward into the future, wanting to know what was next, but when Y2k passed and planes didn't fall from the sky and elevators didn't stop between floors we realized we were here, we had made it into the future. So we have the futurism-presentism divide. Where future shock is something more like an escalating exasperation or dread (fairly clearly defined by Toffler as rate of change increasing at a speed that threatens to surpass our physiological capacities to process it) present shock is less of shock and more of a continual low-level unease. Rushkoff points out that in the midst of streams and feeds the Twitter, Facebook and email pings our cell phones deliver are not really the present but continuous notifications of what happened a few minutes ago, something peripheral.

But shouldn't a book cut up into syndromes of presentism (overwinding, digiphrenia, fractalnoia) be fairly precise in its terminology? Rushkoff never defines what the present is. And I'm not being purposely obtuse. I sympathize with that sort of here-but-never-here brand of unease that most people didn't have five or ten years ago. But after a while there's the sense that he isn't advocating a return to the present as much as a return to the mythic present. What does it mean to be present in the way he advocates? After all, isn't planning what you’re going to do five minutes from now a ping from the future?

A consistent feature of present shock is narrative collapse: the end of narrative as a coordinating force. Presentism displaces us from the old linear continuum with beginning, middle and end, and gives us only a succession of moments. The shock is not that we’re always in the middle, but that there is no middle. This loss of context is our contemporary baseline anxiety. The Twitter stream is not like a book where you pick up where you left off; you can close your browser and turn off your phone, and it just keeps going in your absence. It’s in vain to try to catch up on a feed when you come back; you just have to give up and start at whatever’s most current. There’s a certain intuitive appeal to Rushkoff's claims here, but then again narrative seems to be everywhere. NPR doesn't do news anymore, they tell people's stories. Narrative probably has collapsed, but more so under its own weight: it didn't evaporate, it imploded. More precisely maybe, narrative is alive and well but no longer functions as a vehicle for meaning. Narrative is a means of compression. Information that is too complex to be incorporated as a whole—or in a timely way—is compressed into something easier to wield and transmit. But a particular story is not the only one to be pulled from the data; hearing everyone's story is too numbing. Context and meaning share a good bit of overlap, but I’m more comfortable saying we haven't lost context as Rushkoff claims we have. It’s more that it's been carved into micro-units and resides more often in metaphor, framing, gesture and is still strung together too in narratives, although it survives less in the narratives of culture than of subculture.

It's grand narrative that Rushkoff seems to be pining after which is sort of strange because of how clearly opposed he is to oppression of the masses. It's as easy to call to mind historic cases of narrative coordinating good as evil. So it's not apparent what he wants here—to resurrect grand or “universal” narrative somehow stripped of its capacity to be imposed on us for purposes of oppression? Narrative is something more ad-hoc than it used to be. It's more specific and less sweeping. It's mostly for more local and limited coordination. In a certain sense it's not a problem of narrative collapse, but that our belief in grand narrative has not yet collapsed. Rushkoff's complaints and reluctance to drop this belief in Present Shock takes on that your-narrative-is-not-my-narrative kind of flavor.

Rushkoff makes a nice assessment of how misaligned corporate use of social networking is to the way individuals on social networks communicate. People on social networks swap facts—often “facts”—about brands (quality aspects, manufacturing practices, ethical issues) while the corporate tweets revolve not around anything factual or even counterfactual, but around the lore of the brand—an increasingly absurd narrative in an age of narrative collapse. He advises not just corporations but institutions in general should be “abandoning communications as a separate task, and instead just doing all the right things that you want talked about.”

Narrative collapse also leads to what Rushkoff calls fractalnoia, something like pattern recognition in unhealthy overdrive: “While we may blame the Internet for the ease with which conspiracy theories proliferate, the net is really much more culpable for the way it connects everything to almost everything else…Of course, once everyone is connected to everyone and everything else, nothing matters anymore.” Fortunately there's an implicit economy even in connection and everything is not connected to everything else. It’s really sort of a strange claim to say that it is. Imagine a brain where every neuron was connected to every other neuron. It would be completely nonfunctional as a computational system. In the mean time an entire chapter of Present Shock's total five is based on this false premise. Sorting conspiracy theory from the plausible is probably not too taxing for this book's audience. There's plenty of it out there, but it seems to be pretty well spontaneously segregated—i.e. it is not connected to everything else.

But maybe there's still some use in "Fractalnoia." Ruskoff points out how we have news agencies “chasing their own tails” to pin ex poste narrative to every stock market fluctuation. He offers the reader some helpful advice: “The trick is to see the shapes of the patterns rather than the content within them.” The next paragraph demonstrates how it’s done: “Charlie Sheen did not rise to Twitter popularity merely by being fired from his sitcom and posting outlandish things; he was filling an existential vacuum created in the wake of the Arab Spring story immediately preceding him.”

A lot of the book's interesting points are subsumed by an evil corporate narrative before they're allowed to get interesting. He takes a brief look at grain based medieval economies where the fact that the grain could rot and steadily devalue made for a different circulation dynamic, giving no incentive to hoard. But he quickly works this into a centuries-spanning narrative, making sure always to first personify corporations in order to vilify them properly. That we’re a preyed-upon consumer culture is a really stale point to be making in a book that's ostensibly about the present. Feudalism for Ruskoff is more than a metaphor for the current economic reality but is italicized and underlined in the charters of each of our corporate overlords. Unfortunately it's a narrative that works its way in and out of a good part of the book—like I can’t advise you “skip this section to avoid the whole Masons bit” (don't worry, he doesn't actually go as far as tying in the Masons). It doesn't really contribute anything to the present shock phenomenon, and disentangling his cranky prerogatives from the substantive material can get confusing.

The most enjoyable chapter was “Overwinding.” If you're the type that can read chapters or sections of books alone—I’m usually not—I recommend this chapter even if you don't plan on reading the rest of the book. He talks about the differences between time-keeping and timing (what the ancient Greeks called chronos and kairos) and distinguishes between ponds and streams, RAM and hard drive, storage and flow (although like signal and noise, all of these probably depend at some level on viewing perspective and Rushkoff doesn't really explore that). It's pseudo-metaphysical in the good way where it's not laden with a lot of philosophical jargon, and it's vague, but that's OK because it's sort of feeling out new conceptual metaphors. I would have liked to see this part expanded. (A good book along similar lines centered on decision making is Venkatesh Rao's Tempo .)

You could say that this isn't a book about solutions. If criticism is visionary solutions are implicitly indicated from it. That is, it points to a space that's being inadequately mined for solutions. I won't actually claim that Present Shock is radical in that way, but let's say it fits that format. The main shortcoming is that it's meant to be criticism but is moralizing instead—the difference being maybe that criticism stipulates that people move forward; moralizing stipulates that they revert, that they forego some pleasure or subdue some drive that is already taken for granted. Moralizing is basically annoying (because the moralizer, for whatever background reason, does not have to put in the same effort to restrain himself as the audience does). So we end up with “If we are kissing someone on the lips, then we are not poking anyone through our Facebook accounts.”—i.e. you use Facebook too much. And people who illegally share music are “music stealers.” We're left wondering whether Twitter feeds are hazardous because people stop thinking, or because other people stop thinking.

If you're coming to the book for something theoretical-ish, you're a good skimmer and your expectations are not too grand, Present Shock does cover some good ground and might be worth looking into. If you want a prescriptive approach to that overwhelmed feeling that the digital age has now long been famous for something like Howard Rheingold’s Net Smart would be a lot more satisfying.

[Grace · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really fascinating concept and there is some good stuff in here, but the execution is lacking. The narrative was disjointed and almost incoherent -- arguments didn't stack or build, and I finished the book without feeling like he every really even *had* a central thesis or big takeaway. There is intriguing stuff, but it never feels like it's explored enough to have any real depth or staying power. This one was a bit of a letdown.

[Artak Aleksanyan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ամենաերկար կարդացած գրքերիցս է, ամենաբարդն ու երևի ամենակարևորներից մեկը։ Ամերիկացի մեդիա տեսաբան Դուգլաս Ռաշկոֆը ամենաազդեցիկ մեդիա փորձագետներից է։ Հենց նրան է պատկանում օրինակ, վիրուսային մեդիա արտահայտությունը։ Հենց նա է ժամանակին շրջանառության մեջ դրել «մեդիա փոխարժեք» գաղափարը, ըստ որի մարդկային հարաբերությունների չափման միավորներից է նաև նրա մասին հիշատակումները, մեդիա ակտիվությունը, անեկդոտները և այլն։

«Շոկային ներկան» նրա նախավերջին գիրքն է, որը նա գրել է 2013 թվականին։ Գրքի առաջին մասն ուղղակի փայլուն է, երկրորդում նա արդեն խորանում է, թե ինչ կլինի մեդիայի հետ ապագայում՝ սկսելով քննարկել տարբեր զարգացման վարկածներ՝ վիրտուալ իրականությունից մինչև նանո-տեխնոլոգիաներ։

Իսկ «Շոկային ներկա» ասելով նա նկատի ունի, որ մեր կյանքը վաղուց արդեն փոխվել է։ Նրա ռիթմը, որակը, ինտենսիվությունը ոչ թե արագացել են, այլ ստացել նոր որակ։ Եթե նախկինում մենք գտնվում էինք լողավազանում, հետևաբար, մեզանից հասնում էր ընդամենը լողալ, իմանալ լողավազանի սահմանները և սահմանել լողալու հերթ, ապա այժմ մենք գտնվում ենք բաց ծովում։ Այժմ, արդեն ոչ թե լողալու վայրն է փոխվել, այլ ամբողջ փիլիսոփայությունը։ Այժմ լողալ իմանալը միայն բավարար չէ. պետք է դիմադրել ալիքներին, երբեմն տրվել դրանց, իմանալ որքան հեռանալ ափից, կամ հակառակը՝ ափից հեռու գտնվել։

Նույնը նաև կյանքում. այժմ ամեն ինչ տեղի է ունենում հենց այս պահին, կարող է կտրուկ անկանխատեսելի դառնալ, հետևաբար ուղղակի բավարար չէ հետևել սկզբունքներին ու արժեքներին, պետք է նաև արագ կողմնոորեշվել, ունենալ վեկտորներ, զատել «ներկայի» մեջ առաջնային ու երկրորդայինը։ Ու այդ ամենն անել ինֆորմացիոն հեղեղի մեջ, որն այնքան շատ է ու տարբեր որակների, որ կարող է ոչ միայն ապակողմնորոշել, այլև դառնալ նոր «ներկայի» պատճառ։

[Magdelanye · Rating 4 out of 5]

If we could only catch up with the waves of information, we feel, we would at last be in the now. This is a false goal. For not only have our devices outpaced us, they don't even reflect a here and now that may constitute any sort of present tense. p71

Time itself becomes just another form of information- another commodity to be processed. p87
Our digital selves exist in a time unhinged to the rest of our bodies. Eventually the two realities conflict, leading to present shock. p88

The importance of any given moment is dependent solely on who has found it and what they use it for. 157

Douglas Rushkoff adds his lucid perspective to the discussion on what exactly ails the zeitgeist. His suspicions regarding digital harm seem to me to well founded and his rambling style leads to several eureka moments. And of course I love his idea that we should be playing together rather than competing for dominance

...in order to maximize the fun. Instead of yearning for victory ...we should be actively enjoying the present and trying to sustain the playability of the moment. 559

We may not know where we're going any more, but we're going to get there a whole lot faster. p73

[Gizem Kendik Önduygu · Rating 3 out of 5]

İnternete giydirdikleri:
Her şey şu anda oluyor. Gün içinde Twitter feed'ini yakalamaya veya e-mailleri cevaplamaya çalışırken kayboluyoruz. İnsan ritmiyle teknoloji ritmi birbirine uymuyor. Dijital teknolojilerin real time olmadığını anlamamız gerek. İnsan ritmi ayın hareketlerine göre şekillenen nöro-kimyasallarla çalışıyor. İnternette her şey şimdi olurken biz gece-gündüz, mevsimler gibi döngülerle çalışıyoruz. Presnet shock da insanın doğal ritmine uymayan, bu her şeyin şimdi olduğu hissine karşı verdiği bir tepki. Üzgünüm ama işin içine ay hareketleri girince ben koptum.

Ya bi de diyor ki "zombilerden farkımız kalmadı. Ben "team human" kampındayım. Bu gidişle singularity'e insana benzemeyen, insan ritmine uymayan bir dijital iz bırakıcaz." Ulan umarım şu singularity işi (singularity'den bir ihale işiymiş gibi bahsetmeyi severim) olur da senin bu video konferanslarda itici itici şakalar yapıp insanlar gülmeyince bozulduğun mimiklerini görmek zorunda kalmayız.

[Mark Dickson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Going into this book, I expected something quite different. I think I was expecting something more succinct and cohesive, something that would help articulate why the increasing pace of life makes (many of) us increasingly uncomfortable, anxious, and unhappy.

What I found, though, was just as good. Rushkoff's interests and intellect span a number of fields--economics, technology, politics, philosophy, and history. And he handles each field cogently.

While I didn't have any specific sticking points, there were a few overarching issues that made that made this a good book, not a great one.

The whole thing wasn't sufficiently cohesive.
Admittedly, I seem to have this problem with most of the cultural criticism I read. This would have worked as a collection of articles just as well as an entire book. Perhaps better. At times, the connection seemed forced or weak, there for the sake of putting everything together. But the whole framework doesn't entirely work for me. I'll buy all the premises, but maybe not the broader conclusion. Still, the premises are well-reasoned, timely, and thought-provoking, so this is only a minor gripe.

The proposed terms/lexicon didn't work for me.
This is, perhaps, another throwback from my time in Philosophy. I love to invent terms and concepts, and thus am highly suspect of other frameworks or terms that don't fit with mine. I'm also pretty picky. "Fractalnoia", "Apocalypto", "Digiphrenia", and "Overwinding" all somehow failed to resonate with me. They're all valid conceptual frameworks, but all just slightly askance from how I'd approach these topics. Perhaps other readers won't be bothered. In a great book, you could expect a few terms that will stick, that will become part of the parlance when we talk about...well, whatever it is we're talking about here...I don't think the term is, or will be, "Present Shock".

At times, it's simply too conciliatory.
For a book with a bold premise, it's pretty hard to pin down where it stands on a lot of thorny issues. Rushkoff merely explicates the thorniness, but doesn't come down on either side. In many ways, this is probably a virtue. It's better to draw our own conclusions...but some part of me enjoys really agreeing or disagreeing with an author. I suspect that were I to have written this book, I'd have taken the same tack as Rushkoff.

So there you have it. Highly interesting read, but it won't leave you with a new vision of the world, a plan of attack, or even a broader understanding. But don't less this dissuade you--the smaller points in this book all make it a very worthwhile read.

[Tony · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rushkoff talks several times (including in a meta-discussion about why he's even writing a book in the first place. “How anachronistic!”) about how no-one actually reads books any more — all that really matters is getting the gist, and the quicker the better.

But, even though he could instead have written “dozens of articles, hundreds of blog posts, and thousands of Tweets, reaching more people about more things in less time and with less effort”, he thought it was worthwhile to take the long-form route instead. “I don’t think I could have expressed present shock in a Tweet or a blog post or an article, or I would have.”

Unfortunately this is for entirely back-to-front reasons. It's not that he needed to slowly and carefully build up a compelling argument, but rather that there isn't any there there, and having to express it in a more concise form would make it abundantly clear that something crucial was missing. Worse, the book is painfully full of examples of where Rushkoff himself seems to have only got the gist of something ... but a subtly wrong gist, so the whole book feels like listening to someone who's always slightly off-key.

(As an aside, it's not a PhD thesis, so I'm not expecting everything to be from primary sources, but, really, qotd.com?!)

Journalism, he notes — in the days when there was actually time to do so — used to be about trying to contextualise what was going on into a narrative. But like his inability to decide whether a student claiming to have grokked Hamlet in 5 minutes is a good or bad thing, he seems ambivalent about this too. He bemoans the lack of reflection that happens now (not just in the press, but, as result, in government too), yet is troubled that those prior narratives were usually over-simplified, sometimes plain false, and often abused by someone trying to sell us something (whether a commercial product or a war).

As a result the book itself ends up falling between those two stools. It's a constant barrage of lots of stories and facts (or almost-facts), but with surprisingly little attempt to actually construct meaning out of the parts, other than in support of the one big everything-is-a-nail thesis of the book, and thus it comes across largely as a massively elongated Chewbacca defense.

There are certainly enough nuggets of insight strewn throughout the book to give it some value. But unfortunately most of those are second-hand.

[Jamieanna · Rating 1 out of 5]

That's it! We have arrived in the future. Rushkoff's books is an allusion to Alvin Toffler's 1970 warning FUTURE SHOCK. Do we travel by jetpack or date robots? Not yet, but I guess you could say the potential is there.

What I found most troubling was the first chapter of Rushkoff's book, in which he does little more than encyclopedize examples for what he mourns as "the narrative collapse." Rushkoff posits that our need and value in traditional (read "linear") storytelling has ceased in wake of our technologic obsession with instant gratification. I found this argument thin and presumptuous. Citing Homer, Joseph Campbell, and contemporary sitcoms, Rushkoff makes the case that linear narrative is somehow more valuable and morally worthy than rising experimental/fragmented/disjointed forms. However, the most experimental example Rushkoff can muster to demonstrate his point is Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction," which now, only 19 years later, doesn't seem all that disjointed. Judging from what's playing at the box office and the current best-seller list, the masses still enjoy traditional narrative, and I don't see that changing any time soon!

"Present Shock" is an allusion to Toffler's 1970 social commentary calling for a collective awareness (and alert) for the future
Although throughout much of the book Rushkoff insists that evolving technology accounts for all shifts in recent paradigm, he does not completely dismiss the role of human behavior and responsibility. Rushkoff writes, “Facebook’s reduction of people to predictively modeled profiles and investment banking’s convolution of the marketplace into an algorithmic battleground were not the choices of machines.” Thus, the vibrating iPhone is not the culprit for our current lack of attention span; we are.

I think it is too soon to examine the lasting impacts evolving technology might leave on human behavior. In the mean time, I see too many people using technology as a vehicle to aid the well being, education, and mindfulness of others to join Rushkoff on his sanctimonious soapbox.

[Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

(I've just pulled the last paragraph of my blog review - the only thing I'll add is to say that this is absolutely required reading for anyone with any tech device at all in their lives. Let's halt the present shock before it cripples us all.)

Although I did find a few flaws in some of Rushkoff’s arguments and while he occasionally is guilty of dressing up his thoughts a little too ostentatiously, it doesn’t really matter when the thoughts are so important. I want to recommend this book to everyone I know, non-fiction or fiction readers. It’s that important – mostly because of the fact that it doesn’t provide the answers yet. It shows the challenges we’re facing and the issues ahead… and leaves them for our consideration, setting the stage for (hopefully) further thought and engagement and potentially even some solutions. I’ll tell you what: I’m going to log off of this computer, go to the movies, go to dinner, and not look at my phone again tonight. At least, that’s my goal. Will I succeed? Don’t know. But I’m actively going to try – because I’d rather spend the time with my companion this evening than with anyone or anything that might buzz in my pocket. I hope that, either from this review or this book or even something else entirely, that you will also find some time to turn off and check out – it’ll all be here when you get back.

Much, much more at RB: http://wp.me/pGVzJ-In

[Kris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Worthwhile, but rather circuitous. He never seems to quite finish one discussion before running off to another. Some of the references feel dated. The chapters are long and meandering. There are central themes, but his illustrations and examples are sprawling and stacked on top of each other. Still, there's some fascinating ideas, and I always like seeing a writer analyze the way technology affects our perceptions and values.

See Tracy's review for a good outline: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Mentioned on the White Horse Inn podcast.

Similar books:
--The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
--Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
--Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology

[Valentina]

I just heard about this book on NPR from an interview with the author himself, Douglas Rushkoff, and what he speaks about in this book really hit home to me. I've been having a problem dealing with how I relate to my friends online. I cannot perfectly transition between the past and present when there is no forward thinking and no certainty as to where relationships stand as of now, too. There seems to be no time online OR offline to enjoy "relating" to anyone. This symptom falls into what Rushkoff terms "Digiphrenia" = the experience of trying to exist in more than one incarnation of yourself at the same time" and it seems to be the disturbance of the digital age.

I look forward to reading further about what Mr. Rushkoff has to say, especially about how we can improve and move towards a future we can have time to enjoy with friends we can avoid blindsiding.

[H Wesselius · Rating 2 out of 5]

An uneven read. His examples and stories are what kept me going despite the urge, several times, to return the book to the library. In some instances he repeats old concepts especially the collapse of the narrative and other times his theorizing is so off beat its doubtful anyone wrote of it before or will later. Narrative collapse, the first chapter, is the best in terms of writing and thought. The third, overwinding, is interesting and the last, apocalyptico, is fascinating but speculative. Very uneven and be prepared to skip through to the interesting parts if you wish to sustain yourself to the end. Interestingly he is somewhat critical of futurists yet he undoubtedly writes and acts like one.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome. Classic Rushkoff ... this books argues that our Twitter-like, always-on behavior is altering the way our very minds work ... and our concept of time itself. Very fascinating stuff, highly recommended (I'm a huge Rushkoff fan already -- read nearly all of his books). If you like media analysis combined with ancient myths and technology, synthesized amazingly into a seamless braid, you've love this.

[Ninakix · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought I would like this book a lot more than I did. I guess the big problem for me was that I just found the entire argument weak. In many instances, I just didn't buy the story he painted, and occasionally just didn't even quite believe the facts he laid out. In other cases, he seemed to attack what he calls "presentism" when I wondered if it was a bad thing at all.

[Radwa · Rating 2 out of 5]

English review below.

كتاب آخر لا يعجبني بسبب أسلوبه رغم اهتمامي بالفكرة العامة. في هذا الكتاب ، يحاول راشكوف شرح الحاضر الدائم، وهو الوضع الذي نشهد فيه البث المباشر لكل تفاصل حياتنا والتي لا يمكن لأجسادنا وعقولنا البشرية أن تستوعبها حقًا وآثارها واسعة النطاق على كل جانب من جوانب حياتنا. لا أعتقد أنه تمكن من تقديم الفكرة بشك جيد بصراحة، لأن أسلوبه محموم ومشتت كما لو كان هو نفسه في قبضة الصدمة الحالية التي يحاول تحذيرنا منها.

يحاول كل فصل توضيح آثار الصدمة الحالية على جانب مختلف من حياتنا، مع قصص وبيانات لمساعدته على توضيخ الفكرة والآثار، لكن الانتقال من فكرة إلى أخرى كان مزعجًا، ووجدت أنني فقدت معظم الوقت الفكرة الرئيسية التي يحاول نقلها.

أرى أنها فكرة جديرة بالاهتمام ، ويمكنني أن أرى آثارها على حياتي الخاصة والطريقة التي أستهلك بها مواقع التواصل الاجتماعي وأنشطتي اليومية لكن للأسف الكتاب ليس الأسهل في القراءة أو نقل هذه الأفكار بطريقة بسيطة أو متماسكة.

Another book that loses me because of the style rather than the ideas. In this book, Rushkoff tries to dissect "the frozen, overwhelmed by an always-on, live-streamed reality that our human bodies and minds can never truly inhabit. And our failure to do so has had wide-ranging effects on every aspect of our lives", bu I don't think he does a very good job, because his style is frantic and all over the place, as if he himself is in the grips of the Present Shock.

Each chapter tries to see to illustrate the effects of Present Shock on a different aspect of our lives, with stories and data to aid him him, but the jump from an idea to another was jarring, and I found myself lost most of the time of the main idea he's trying to convey.

I can see that it's a worthwhile idea, and I can see its effects on my own life and the way I consume media and my everyday activities, I just found the book not the easiest to read or to convey these ideas in a simple or coherent way, sadly.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Asks many interesting questions in situating our 'post-historical' technological present, within the wider historical and cultural context.

I struggled to find the first chapter convincing - regarding the abandonment of narrative in contemporary media (film, tv etc).

But the rest of it was super thought provoking. Even if it jumps around crazily from concept to concept, perhaps reflecting the vast scope of the issue Rushkoff is addressing -our multi nodal networked world - as well as admission that this took him years to write.

In one sentence?

'How do we live meaningful and engaging lives when our identity, relationships, cultural world view, art, are enmeshed in voluntary, pervasive, always on, global digital networks that are predominantly used to further the interests and objectives of capitalism? '

But also perhaps,

'It wasn't always like this and it doesn't have to be this way.

And put your fucking phone down when we are having a conversation.

Please

Thanks. Sorry, didn't meant to sound angry'.

[Sean Goh · Rating 2 out of 5]

First few chapters were more interesting, the back half of overwinding and the entire fractalnoia chapters were quite meh.
_______
Information overload may not have increased the rate at which disasters occur, but it has exponentially increased the rate at which they are witnessed.

Toffler understood how our knowledge of history helps us put the present in perspective. We understand where we are, in part, because we have a story that explains how we got here. We do not have great skill in projecting that narrative ability into the future.
The craft of futurism almost always comes with an agenda.

Freestyle sports like skateboarding, snowboarding, rock climbing and mountain biking are more compatible with a world in which team loyalty and military victory have given way to self-expression and the thrill of the moment.

The CNN effect: This saturation with live, uncensored and unconsidered images from around the world impacted public opinion profoundly and actually forced government leaders to make decisions more quickly. It drives policymakers to have a policy position. One would have to articulate it very quickly. One is in real-time mode, without time to reflect.

In a presentist world, it is impossible to get in front of the story, much less craft it from above.
Without long-term goals expressed for us as readily accessible stories, people lose the ability to respond to anything but terror. If we have no destination toward which we are progressing, then the only thing that motivates our movement is to get away from something threatening. We move from problem to problem, avoiding calamity as best as we can, our worldview increasingly characterised by a sense of panic.

Columbia University historian Mark Lilla: The combination of amplified self-confidence and fear of elites is a dangerous one. The Tea Partiers have two classic American traits that have grown more pronounced in recent years: blanket distrust of institutions and an astonishing and unwarranted confidence in the self.

The measures we take to stay abreast of each minuscule change to the data stream (notifications) end up magnifying the relative importance of these blips to the real scheme of things. By dividing our attention between our digital extensions, we sacrifice our connection to the truer present in which we are living.

The average person's biological clock, without outside time cues, would lengthen to 25 hours. Travelling east, which shortens the day, is more disorienting than travelling west, which lengthens it.

The original digital communication technologies (forum / message boards) allowed everyone to participate at their own pace and in the most effective part of their daily cycle.

There are two very differing relationships to time. There is stored time - the stuff bound up by information and symbols, which needs to be unpacked. And then there is flowing time - the stuff that happens in the moment and then is gone. for which one needs to be present to observe.
Stored time is still long enough for cultures to develop. Flowing time is not.

A flow-based economy favours those who actively create value, but disfavours those who are used to reaping passive rewards (landowners, investors).

The economics of consumption have always been dependent on illusions of increasing immediacy and newness, and an actuality of getting people to produce and consume more stuff, more rapidly, with evermore of their time.

We get so much better and faster at consuming all the time that there's no point in actually having anything at all. In a certain light, it sounds almost communal. Except we are not building a new commons together where everything is shared; we are turning life into a sea of monetisable experiences where the meter is always on.

Once 'the shadow of the future' (possibility of future relations) lengthens, we have the basis for more durable relationships.
Communication between prisoners bred cooperation, isolation bred paranoia. Communication generates lateral feedback loops and encouraged an extended time horizon.

The individual is flow, the community is storage. Only the individual can take action, only the community can absorb their impact over time.

At least in the fractal: one's relationships matter more than one's accumulated personal knowledge; the shared overtakes the owned; connections supersede the ego.

Present shock provides the perfect cultural and emotional pretexts for apocalyptic thinking. It is destabilising; it deconstructs the narratives we use to make meaning; it leads us to compulsively overwind, magnifying the stakes of any given moment; it leads us to draw paranoid connections where there are none; and finally its lack of regard for beginnings and endings - its focus on the perpetual now - drives us to impose order on chaos.

The solution, of course, is balance. Finding the sweet spot between storage and flow, dipping into the different media and activities depending on the circumstances. Taking the time to write or read a book on the phenomenon does draw a line in the sand. It means we can stop the onslaught of demands on our attention; we can create a safe space for uninterrupted contemplation; we can give each moment the value it deserves and no more; we can tolerate uncertainty and resist the temptation to draw connections and conclusions before we are ready; and we can slow or even ignore the seemingly inexorable pull from the strange attractor at the end of human history. For just as we can pause, we can also un-pause.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think Rushkoff is onto something. Although there are a number of tangents within this book that I wasn’t convinced by (chronobiology for one), the central thesis is effective. ‘Present Shock’ is both title and theme: the stresses exerted on people through the perpetual immediacy of 21st century living. Rushkoff approaches this from various directions, organised broadly under four heading: ‘narrative collapse’, ‘digiphrenia’, ‘overwinding’, and ‘fractalnoia’. In each case, the problems that he articulated reminded me of other work. Narrative collapse, for example, is akin to Žižek’s lament in Living in the End Times that we lack the Master-Signifiers necessary to impose some structure upon the slew of contradictory information constantly thrown at us. I found Rushkoff refreshingly willing to critique capitalism, albeit in more of a descriptive than deeply analytical fashion. His brief description of the debt-based foundation beneath Western economies in Chapter 3 is pretty chilling. Nonetheless, the aim of the book is not to suggest solutions but to describe the current situation and its implications. Which is thematically appropriate, on reflection!

Some insights that I especially appreciated include this, on hipsters:

That [these brands] provide a sense of grounding and reality to young people today says less about the high quality and authenticity of mass-produced mid-century goods than it does about the untethered, timeless quality of the hipster experience. Authenticity comes to mean little more than that an object or experience can be traced to some real moment in time - even if it’s actually being purchased at Walmart or on amazon.com.

On trying to find coherence:

In a world without time, any and all sense-making must occur on the fly. Simultaneity often seems like all we have. That’s why anyone contending with present shock will have a propensity to make connections between things happening in the same moment - as if there had to be an underlying logic.

Academic study tries to break you of this tendency, but it remains seductive. In the consumption sphere, this struggle to make sense has to deal with an absolute cacophony of feedback about everything. How to choose an ISP or new camera amid the confusion of emphatic reviews? Reliance on the most recent piece of information available is very tempting. Rushkoff focuses this issue from the company perspective, in terms of transparency as a means by which branding is radically undermined. Linking the former and latter points, though, emphasises the chaos engendered by the availability of so much information to trivial product choices (which is oddly akin to the 'perfect information' that free market economic assumes would allow for perfectly rational choices). This is what Rushkoff terms ‘fractalnoia’, which he warns can promote a ‘reductionist outlook on humanity’ amongst those who professionally try to find patterns in said chaos. Neoliberal economists are probably as guilty of that as it is possible to be.

Rushkoff ends the book with a shorter chapter on a pet topic of mine - the current cultural obsession with the apocalypse, which he blames on present shock. (Personally, I also link this more broadly to the rise of neoliberalism and the ‘End of History’/TINA narrative.) I enjoyed the short tour of the significance of changing zombie depictions, however the main points of this chapter form the most powerful part of the book:

At least the annihilation of the human race - or its transmogrification into silicon - resolves the precarious uncertainty of present shock. [...] Apocalypto gives us a way out. A line in the sand. An us and a them. And, more important, a before and after.

That’s why it’s important that we distinguish between valid concerns about the survival of our species and these more fantastic wishes for reversal and recognition - the story elements at the end of all heroic journeys. If anything, the common conflation of so many apocalypse scenarios - bird flu, asteroid, terrorist attack - camouflages ones that may already be in progress, such as climate change or the slow poisoning of the oceans. [...]

To many, it’s easier, or at least more comforting, to approach these problems as intractable. [...] The hardest part of living in present shock is that there’s no end and, for that matter, no beginning. It’s a chronic plateau of interminable stresses that seem to have always been there. There’s no original source to blame and no end in sight. This is why the return to simplicity offered by the most extreme scenarios is proving so alluring to so many of us.

This is not an academic or theoretical book, thus it references anecdote more than I am really comfortable with. I also found some of the terms used cringe-making, ‘networked ideascape’ being perhaps the worst offender. Nonetheless, there is a satisfying interdisciplinary broadness to it and some very thought-provoking insights within. It also manages to both celebrate and criticise technology, whilst also making it clear that technology is not a neutral force and that under capitalism, ‘the answer to the problems of technology is always just more technology’.

[jus]

DNF - some interesting concepts and thoughts but rarely does the rhetoric ever finish strong or feel whole (working on allowing myself to let a book go when it doesn’t hold my attention instead of finishing just for the sake of finishing)

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now
Douglas Rushkoff
Read it in hardback at 256 pages

As an employee of a large software distribution company, I see what Douglas Rushkoff calls 'Present Shock' on a daily basis. While most people can certainly relate to Rushkoffs example of the dinner/bar situation in which everyone you met to mingle is instead on their cell phone, that hits home for everyone, after all; who hasn't experienced this yet? I have seen some fantastic things, most notably people so absorbed on their laptops that they have tumbled down stairs or fallen over second story banisters. I also see how future technology will only cement the charms of a digital life we have now and lay the foundation for even more integration in the future. There is no escaping it.

With all of this in mind, I saw Mr. Rushkoff hocking this book on some late night political satire show on Comedy Central and figured it might be worth my time.

In Present Shock, Rushkoff outlines what he believes present shock to be, as opposed to future shock, as well as why he believes we have found ourselves in this situation. A kind of cross street between past and future avenue. While everyone clings to each Facebook update or Tweet, they fail to realize that everything on the net is the past and while they think they are more connected to the present, each entry is a time stamp of the past. Something that makes that dinner/bar ordeal so painful when it's guilty members could be living in a present only shared with those around them but choose to immerse with the past instead. The book aims to outline why Mr. Rushkoff thinks this is and does so through a series of examples (corporate, consumerism, etc.) along a hazy timeline in which he believes the switch occurred. Obviously escalated the more that technology has entered our lives.

The content of the book is pretty superb as it relates to what he believes present shock to be, and I loved a lot of the examples he chose to use to convey the feeling. His argument gets significantly more flimsy with the examples of how we got to where we are and most definitely falls apart about where we are headed. I lost a lot of steam as the book was winding down, although I must admit I was on a vacation where reading was a hard task to complete.

The most stunning rumination of Rushkoff from Present Shock for me:

"We think of time as the numbers on the clock, rather than the moments they are meant to represent" - Rushkoff

3.5, rounding down for GoodReads

[William Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rushkoff's "Present Shock" accurately describes the problems with attention deficit and the shift to an emphasis on the immediate. Chapter one, my favorite, will make you want to jump out a window. At the core of this book is an important point about our changing society as a result of TV and technology: you are being controlled. But Rushkoff's argument becomes a little scrambled along the way and you are unsure of whether he is actually justifying the present shock and promoting collective thinking or pointing out the dangers. For example, he writes that he doesn’t know whether he should be delighted or horrified by a student learning the story of Hamlet via Wikipedia; I don’t find any possible delight in that kind of skimping out. He basically insinuates that we need to accept some of the technological changes, though reading his other works and interviews I don’t believe that is his message. He also seems to sympathize with Millennials and believes they were traumatized by 9/11, and while there may be some truth there on an individual basis, a kid who was five in Nebraska is not going to have the same feelings about 9/11 as the fourteen year old from Brooklyn. It’s just an over generalization. In one digression, he makes an inaccurate statement in passing about lithium batteries that has been refuted. Overall, I think his commitment to walk the neutral line, which he does very well, mixes up the message and makes the overall thesis a little unclear. I also don't see any true cause and effect analysis on the loss of history, or anything about the impact on education (my research interest and subject of my forthcoming writings). So there were little things along the way that chipped away at the fifth star, but if you take the overall package of what Rushkoff provides, this is a worthy and educational book that will make you think beyond its pages. Highly recommended.

[Caroline Bock · Rating 5 out of 5]

PRESENT SHOCK: When Everything Happens Now -- a short excerpt from this amazing nonfiction book is telling --

“Our society has reoriented itself to the present moment. Everything is live, real time, and always on. It’s not a mere speeding up, however much our lifestyles and technologies have accelerated the rate at which we attempt to do things. It’s more of a diminishment of anything that isn’t happening right now – and the onslaught of everything that supposedly is. … it’s why the worlds leading search engine is envisioning everything in a live, customized and predictive flow of data branded “Google Now” why email is giving way to texting, and why blogs are being superseded by twitter feeds. It’s why kids in school can no longer follow linear arguments, why narrative structure collapsed into reality TV and why we can’t engage in meaningful dialogue about last month’s books and music, much less long-term global issues.”

Ultimately, Rushkoff, describes this as “presentism.” We are chasing the now, the present, (always a few beats behind of course, always frustrated that we can never catch up) without reflection—without a moment to think before we shoot off that email or tweet-- without true connections to the past or even to one another. We are always chasing what is going on now as Rushkoff states. What we are doing at any given moment becomes all-important but at the end its behaviorally doomed,flawed,narcissist-- it is present shock. Read it now.

Must hurry off now, I can't seem to slow down, or reflect, or contemplate, if I think I'm missing the "now."
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