For more information about Douglas Rushkoff’s book, “LIFE INC. How The World Became A Corporation And How To Take It Back” check out lifeincorporated.net and the LIFE INC. 9min movie
The LIFE INC. Dispatch = Brief weekly videos encapsulating key concepts and ready strategies from Douglas Rushkoff’s LIFE INC. for de-corporatizing our lives, abandoning the speculative economy, and rebuilding both commerce and community from the bottom up.
You can also download an MP3 audio file of the Dispatch: Life Inc. Dispatch 01 – Audio
Beyond the Benjamins:
Complementary Currency Systems and Social Interdependence
featuring Alex Gordon-Brander, Charles Eisenstein, and Douglas Rushkoff
Friday May 15, 2009 @ Lila Center
8- 10 pm
302 Bowery @ Houston St., 3rd fl.
F/V, D, 6, R/W trains all nearby
$10 or $5 (students/unemployed/monthly IDP donors)
Money should not keep you away!
Let us know if you can’t afford the cost and would like to attend.
Contact info {at} theidproject(.)com
I’m beginning to excerpt the book, on BoingBoing and right here on Rushkoff.com
Here’s the first:
INTRODUCTION
Your Money or Your Life
A Lesson on the Front Stoop
I got mugged on Christmas Eve.
I was in front of my Brooklyn apartment house taking out the trash
when a man pulled a gun and told me to empty my pockets. I gave him
my money, wallet, and cell phone. But then—remembering some-
thing I’d seen in a movie about a hostage negotiator—I begged him to
let me keep my medical- insurance card. If I could humanize myself in
his perception, I figured, he’d be less likely to kill me.
He accepted my argument about how hard it would be for me to get
“care” without it, and handed me back the card. Now it was us two
against the establishment, and we made something of a deal: in ex-
change for his mercy, I wasn’t to report him—even though I had
plainly seen his face. I agreed, and he ran off down the street. I fool-
ishly but steadfastly stood by my side of the bargain, however coerced
it may have been, for a few hours. As if I could have actually entered
into a binding contract at gunpoint.
In the meantime, I posted a note about my strange and frightening
experience to the Park Slope Parents list—a rather crunchy Internet
community of moms, food co-op members, and other leftie types ded-
icated to the health and well- being of their families and their decid-
edly progressive, gentrifying neighborhood. It seemed the responsible
thing to do, and I suppose I also expected some expression of sympa-
thy and support.
Amazingly, the very first two emails I received were from people
angrythat I had posted the name of the street on which the crime had
occurred. Didn’t I realize that this publicity could adversely affect all
of our property values? The “sellers’ market” was already difficult
enough! With a famous actor reportedly leaving the area for Manhat-
tan, does Brooklyn’s real- estate market need more bad press? And this
was beforethe real- estate crash.
I was stunned. Had it really come to this? Did people care more
about the market value of their neighborhood than what was actually
taking place within it? Besides, it didn’t even make good business
sense to bury the issue. In the long run, an open and honest conversa-
tion about crime and how to prevent it should make the neighborhood
safer. Property values would go up in the end, not down. So these
homeowners were more concerned about the immediate liquidity of
their town houses than their long- term asset value—not to mention
the actual experience of living in them. And these were among the
wealthiest people in New York, who shouldn’t have to be worrying
about such things. What had happened to make them behave this way?
Richard Metzger interviews me about my book Life Inc., the economic meltdown, the failure of the mythology of corporatism, and why everything is going to be okay.
Starting this Monday morning, I’ll be posting on BoingBoing.net as a guest blogger for two weeks. During this time, I will be posting BIG excerpts from the book here at Rushkoff.com.
By the weekend, I will be posting additional excerpts in mp3 form from the upcoming RandomAudio version of Life Inc.
And finally, next Monday morning, we will release the first version of Life Inc: The Movie, right here at rushkoff.com, as well as on YouTube and Blip.tv and anyplace else that will host it.
