Douglas Rushkoff Quotes

A lot of people don't know how to talk on the phone anymore.

Strangely enough, I really think that shoes are a communication tool between people.

You walk into a restaurant these days, and what you see is everyone with their phone next to them. That is terrible. Instead of concentrating on the relationship, on the needs and activities and interests of the other person, they are constantly looking at their phone.

My fundamental belief is, if you’re looking at your phone more than into someone’s eyes, that’s a problem.

With the advent of cell phones, especially with the very small microphone that attach to the cell phone itself, it's getting harder and harder I find, to differentiate between schizophrenics and people talking on a cell phone.

It is difficult to imagine how any behavior in the presence of another person can avoid being a communication of one's own view of the nature of one's relationship with that person and how it can fail to influence that person.

When you encounter people in life - like a chance encounter at a bar or wherever you happen to be - you make these incredibly quick, quite intricate decisions about people based on very small amounts of coded information. We're good at that.

Make it your profitable habit to carefully study facial expressions. You can see the entire human drama in a face; you can tell its owner's history.

Humans cannot avoid trying to influence others. Everything we say or do is examined and interpreted by others for clues as to our intentions.

Our human face happens to be one of the most powerful channels that we all use to communicate social and emotional states: everything from enjoyment, surprise, empathy, and curiosity.

Many people with autism struggle with reading nonverbal cues and acting on them. When you lose that ability to understand and process nonverbal cues, you're at a huge disadvantage socially.

I don't like it when people remain glued to their phones while talking, so I have no apps on mine.

I'm not particularly interested in my phone. I'm interested in human contact. I think phones have created a certain social incapacity; it's made people socially deficient.

If you take the fashion out of it, clothing has a lot of information - about how we feel about ourselves, how we'd like to feel about ourselves, and what we'd like to be: If you show up to an interview in sweatpants and a T-shirt, I'm going to deal with you in a really different way.

Our ancient forebears who learned to synchronize the movements of dance were those with the capacity to predict what others around them were going to do and signal to others what they wanted to do next. These forms of communication may well have helped lead to the formation of larger human communities.

I remember being 24 in Los Angeles. And up until that moment, when my mom would call my cell phone and it would ring, I would be flushed with some sort of excitement that we all have - a little dopamine rush, when my phone rings - and I'd look down, and it would say, 'Mom.' It used to feel like a job to pick that up.

William Regal once told us he people-watched when he was in the ring. He would see things that people would do. And if they annoyed him, chances are they would annoy someone else. A lot of times I'll just people watch when I'm traveling or at the airport or living everyday life.

If there was a pause in a conversation with anyone, you could always light a cigarette, or if a man lit a cigarette for you, you could look up. It's the most dramatic thing in the world because it's intimate, it's suggestive, and that's one of the problems with giving it up, is that it's a very useful tool.

The movements of the eyes express the perpetual and unconscious courtesy of the parties.

Human behavior is so intriguing. I find myself giving thumbs up signs all the time. I know I look like an absolute dork, but I do it anyway.

She pulls away, pats me on the shoulder with three mini-pats, like those used to pet reptiles.

the person talking to you never looks directly at you, but rather around the room, searching for the answer to the universal cocktail party question, 'Who's here tonight?

Um i'm happy to sit close to you and everything, but i had no idea you would like it so much,' Paris muttered.

Eye contact is a method utilised by a single woman to communicate to a man that she is interested in him. Many women find it difficult to look a man directly in the eyes, not because of shyness, but because a woman's eyes are not located in her chest.

When I'm really hot, I can walk into a room and if a man doesn't look at me, he's probably gay.