Douglas Rushkoff Quotes

We are much better at creating complex technologies than we are at controlling them.

But I will say this: When the scientists of the future show up at my house with robot eyes and they tell me to try them on, I will tell the scientists to screw off, because I do not want to see a world without him.

This is something we're very committed to, it's something that I think people are underestimating right now as they've seen some of the dot-com promises not come through. I think they're missing the fact that the basic technology is moving forward, the new platforms are here and this vision of the digital decade will be a reality.

Science and technology were often used by [the magician of old], even before they came into the marketplace on a mass basis. For example, prior to the moving picture going into theatre, magicians were using the technique of images in motion as illusions in their shows. At that time the process was so new, an audience perceived it as magic. Also in the early stages of holograms magicians would use these images to baffle and mystify their fans. Hence, you always need to stay one step ahead of the technology game to "WOW" the audience.

Maybe I'm an emblem of an old era, and I have to move on.

I was going to have to come up with a rank for myself besides Alpha's mate. In the pack, I was just Mercy- but if ten more people called me the Alpha's mate, I was going to hit someone. It sounded like a chess move.

I've always enjoyed stories that take place in the future but my one disappointment was that the future books described never came. We're not on other planets, there are no flying cars, and the only robots we have in our homes just sweep the floor. So I wanted to write about a future that I thought could really happen. People ask me when I tell them the title of the book, 'Are we all dead?' The good news is, no. We're still here. And I even think the future in my book is strangely hopeful, although I'm sure there will be people who strongly disagree.

Every time the diaphragm winks, the camera repeats the question that now travels through cyberspace and invades, as a modern virus, the memories of machines, men and women. The question that history sets forth. The question which forces us to define ourselves and whose answer makes us human: On which side are you?

I love fashion because it's plugged into the zeitgeist, so it's always changing. Thirty years ago, I could never have predicted I'd be where I am today, so I know I don't know what's going to happen in the next five years or the next 20 years. I have my predictions—I'm sure technology will continue to have an impact on fashion, particularly the way people shop. I think quality will be increasingly important—we're moving away from a time of fast fashion. But really, the only constant in fashion is that you must keep moving forward, otherwise you'll be left behind.

By and large, people are sort of technologically averse in the political space.

The technology is getting better. There will be a day when you'll be able to hear any music you want, anywhere you are, on demand, in a quality that is as good as when it was made. Things are moving in that direction.

I think we need to take a look at the technology, but not depend on it for things that require humanity.

The idea of implanting memories where by the implantee couldn't tell the difference between a real experience and a fantasy experience was really cool. And his ideas of technology - do we control technology or does technology begin to control us? His work hasn't aged a day it seems.

In the future we'll all have 15 minutes of fame and 15 minutes of healthcare.

The will to mastery becomes all the more urgent the more technology threatens to slip from human control

So much American science fiction is parochial - not as true now as it was years ago, but the assumption is one culture in the future, more or less like ours, and with the same ideals, the same notions of how to do things, just bigger and flashier technology. Well, you know darn well it doesn't work that way.

Obviously, technology is moving and reshaping itself, radically, every day. We're all capable of answering that question within ourselves. Would you do it for the person that you love? Would you be married to a hard drive, essentially?

The most important part about tomorrow is not the technology or the automation, but that man is going to come into entirely new relationships with his fellow men. He will retain much more in his everyday life of what we term the naïveté and idealism of the child. I think the way to see what tomorrow is going to look like is just to look at our children.

So youve been over into Russia? said Bernard Baruch, and I answered very literally, I have been over into the future and it works.

The Internet is global and seemingly omniscient, while iPods and phones are all microscopic workings encased in plastic blobjects. Compare that to a steam engine, where you can watch the pistons move and feel the heat of its boilers. I think we miss that visceral appeal of the machine.

The Republic of Technology where we will be living is a feedback world.

So we have progressed to the point where we can move politicians around faster than light. I'm not sure I see the advantage.

Human beings are tool-making animals. Since the prehistoric era, we have created and used a wide variety of objects. But now a significant change is about to occur. In the near future, we will simply become another object that can be monitored, tracked and controlled within a vast machine.

Paintings! They're like TV, but they don't move.