Douglas Rushkoff Quotes

The manufacture of desire isn't at the heart - if it isn't absurd to speak of a heart - of the media torrent. Chronic dissatisfaction is at the heart of the matter.

Time Warner has called and they want us all back on the couch, just consuming - not producing, not sharing - and we should say, 'No.'

It is not at all clear how much the media influences public opinion and how much public opinion influences the media.

I don't know how you can do it, if you don't recognition the media as a power center in America.

Children have adopted a consumerist attitude - I dare you to entertain me.

When you're young, you look at television and think, there's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want.

There are ways that we can manipulate the corporate media to talk about the issues that we care about.

I think that reality TV is so bad. It is a tool by the media to not make people think.

The corporations and the media don't need power; they already have it.

Americans born since World War II have grown up in a media-saturated environment. From childhood, we have developed a sort of advertising literacy, which combines appreciation for technique with skepticism about motives. We respond to ads with at least as much rhetorical intelligence as we apply to any other form of persuasion.

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.

Don't hate the media, become the media.

I think television's become a downright dangerous thing. It has no moral barometer whatsoever. If you want to talk about something that is all about money, just watch the television.

People should never allow themselves to be dictated to by media.

You make a choice whether or not to turn that TV on. We didn't even have a television in the house.

Whoever controls the media, controls the mind.

Consumerism is so weird. It's a sort of conspiracy we collude in. You'd think shoppers spending their hard-earned cash would be highly critical. You know that the manufacturers are trying to have you on.

People say I manipulate the media. Well, duh. We live in a media culture, so why on earth wouldn't I?

Give people control of the media and they will use it. Don’t give them control and you will lose it.

Whoever controls the media—the images—controls the culture.

Ever since Gutenberg, every dynasty, every political leader, every major religion, has recognized that to control the media is to have a powerful instrument for controlling the values and behavior of a population.

The media have disproportionate control of the information in our society.

The hand that rules the press, the radio, the screen, and the far spread magazine, rules the country.

It is true that some people are interested in the buying part of things... They want to buy everything from the movie reviews to the media net to the opinions and so on.

Capitalism and people who control the market have a large hand in everything. It doesn't have anything to do with figuring out what the crowd wants to hear. It has to do with the media deciding what they think people want to hear.