Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age

This is the best book I've read about the promise, perils and ethics of living online. It's short and concise, but frequently profound in the conclusions it draws. Rushkoff has a deep sense of what it means to "be digital" and work extensively with thinking machines. He communicates what's at stake in terms of our relationships, connectedness and anxieties, without lapsing into crude "internet makes us stupid" scaremongering. Here is for example on the black magic of web searching: "With computers and networks, unlike our calculators, we don’t even know what we are asking our machines to do, much less how they are going to go about doing it. Every Google search is—at least for most of us—a Hail Mary pass into the datasphere, show more requesting something from an opaque black box. How does it know what is relevant? How is it making its decisions? Why can’t the corporation in charge tell us?" Highly recommended. show less

This book definitely makes more sense when read alongside the recent ones by Kevin Kelly and by Jaron Lanier. Like them, it's something of a correction on the tech-evangelism that has marked much of its author's earlier works. If Lanier's is a rangy diatribe, and Kelly's a concertedly developed argument, Rushkoff's is a list: it's 10 ideas, laid out plainly for a common reader. The last of these 10 ideas ("commands," a joke on the 10 commandments), the one from which the book takes its title, is the important one. The title pretty much says it all: in a world that is mediated increasingly by software, our lives are in many ways affected by the decision-making of the people who program the software. People who don't program are, in show more effect, to some degree or another, at the mercy of those who do. The answer? Learn to program. It sounds simplistic, and to some extent it is, but demystifying programming (it's not rocket science; it's the math equivalent of writing intelligently) is a valuable lesson. show less

It's all a bit motherhood and bleeding obvious, isn't it?

Yes, these are ten things that are probably true, but they are not particularly well argued. For example #2:Place ("Live in Person") builds a case for the digital media bias to dislocation but doesn't exactly tell us why the solution is "live in person".

Rushkoff's book is essential reading for those who wish to develop a critical framework for dealing with our seemingly "always on" technology. The style is readable and compelling, and Rushkoff is very even-handed with his consideration of technology. He is no technophobe, but he refuses to give himself over to unthinking technophilia. His chapter on telling the truth is the main weakness in the book. I agree that we should, of course, tell the truth, but his reasoning is that media bias is toward "factual" information (whether it is really factual or not). I'm not sure I buy that particular argument.

It's all a bit motherhood and bleeding obvious, isn't it?

Yes, these are ten things that are probably true, but they are not particularly well argued. For example #2:Place ("Live in Person") builds a case for the digital media bias to dislocation but doesn't exactly tell us why the solution is "live in person".

I have no idea why I forced myself to finish this substance-less punditry. It gets two stars because it has a list of good beginning programming resources in the back, and the book might be a good text for high school media studies or technology class.

Quite interesting. Not sure about some of his historical points though.