Program or be Programmed
Eleven Commands for the AI Future

Right from the first page, Douglas Rushkoff's book Program or Be Programmed reminded me of Nicholas Carr's, The Shallows [1] -- only with a broader scope and more buzzwords and a less gloomy appraisal of the subject. I read The Shallows last year, and though it was interesting, it was also overl......more

I'm not sure what I expected of this book, but it was less technical then I thought it was going to be. It is a quick read with a number of thoughtful anecdotes. Some of the "commands" seemed like etiquette lessons for a digital age, but overall I thought the book was insightful. I found the last tw......more

Program or Be Programmed has some serious "Old man yells at cloud" energy, and you know, that's fine, understandable even - every now and then I was totally willing to yell at the clouds with him, but aside from those moments, this book is... questionable. Now, I am aware that it was written and pub......more

As someone who is primarily interested in social media’s influence on us, the chapters ‘Time’ (Do not always be on), ‘Place’ (Live in person) and ‘Complexity’ (You are never completely right) really struck a chord. However, I found the other chapters thought provoking for aspects of the digital age......more

Not so much a treatise on coding, more a sociological examination of the effects of the internet. Here are some quotes: Political organizers who believed the Internet would consolidate their constituencies find that net petitions and self-referential blogging now serve as substitutes for action. A news......more