I’m getting a lot of email about the Life Inc Dispatches we’ve been posting. They are loving the weekly video podcasts, and even suggesting I write a book based on these facts, insights, and strategies for reclaiming commerce as a human (rather than just a corporate) activity.
And while I’m glad people think there’s a book in this, I really do want them to know I’ve actually already written one. So it seems my fear of “over marketing” and thus distorting the purpose of my book has actually led to under-communicating its very existence. Live and learn.
I’m going to try erring on the other side and see what happens. Anyway, here is the link to the Life Inc Dispatches page. We’ll be creating a way to subscribe via rss and iTunes as soon as we can figure that part out. In the meantime, subscribing to the rss of this blog will certainly get you links to those dispatches when they come out. Here’s #1: “Crisis as Opportunity”
The brilliant Ann Althouse interviews me about Life Inc on BloggingHeads.TV. Here’s a bit on how regulation actually helps prevent small businesses from competing with the big boys.
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 06 – Audio
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 05 – Audio
We are looking for people to call into our hotline voicemail and leave a
very short ’shout out’. The idea is to have a collage of voices saying
things, whether it’s the name of the show or a short sentence or even
sound.
Here are some particular phrases we are looking for, but not limited to:
1. The Media Squat
2. The Media Squat on WFMU
3. Free Form Radio
4. Open Source
5. Find the others
But as I mentioned, feel free to say anything. Be creative. The intro is less than
a minute, so if you leave a longer message I’ll just sample a piece of
it.
Here is the number to call:
646-825-8879
(try and make sure the call is complete and it goes through properly so we don’t end up with dropped messages)
The Guardian just devoted a whole lot of space to an interview with me about Life Inc, and how the sensibility of the book came from a tech-head like me.
Rushkoff says he started working on the book more than four years ago (although getting mugged brought the project into sharper focus). Back then, friends and acquaintances scoffed at his predictions that the housing bubble was going to hurt a lot further down the line. “It’s a little sad,” he says. “I wrote the book in the future tense, and then when I was editing I had to put it in the present, and then – in the last draft – I had to put it in the past.”
I posted a piece I like late last night to the Daily Beast – where I’ve just become a columnist – about social networking in Iran.
Most observers of the Twitter-fueled revolution rightly point out that this activity is at its most effective when it actually mobilizes real humans, puts bodies on the street, and gives dissidents the opportunity to organize successful retreats. Digital dissidence alone is easy, and easy to ignore.
But I think it’s also too easy to underestimate the real power of the Internet to provide more than information. On the Internet, content is not king – it never was. The value of Tweets right now is less the information they contain than the solidarity they promote. Like civil rights protesters who sang rousing hymns as they were carried off to jail, Twitterers are bearing witness to what’s happening around them, and calling out into the darkness of cyberspace for confirmation. I’m here. You’re here, too. We are present.
January 21 - Brooklyn, NY. Talk for ETSY, 7p February 1 - The Webb School, Memphis Tennessee. February 2 - Frontline Digital Nation premieres, 9pm PBS March 12 - SWSX, Austin TX more...
