Douglas Rushkoff Books In Order

Novels

  1. Cyberia (1994)
  2. The Cyber Tarot (1994)
  3. Playing the Future (1996)
  4. Children of Chaos (1997)
  5. Ecstasy Club (1997)
  6. Bull (2001)
  7. Exit Strategy (2001)
  8. Present Shock (2013)

Graphic Novels

  1. Club Zero-G (2004)
  2. Testament : Exodus – Volume 4 (2008)
  3. A.D.D (2012)
  4. Aleister & Adolf (2016)

Non fiction

  1. Free Rides (1991)
  2. The Gen X Reader (1994)
  3. Media Virus! (1994)
  4. Coercion (1999)
  5. Stoned Free (2002)
  6. Nothing Sacred (2003)
  7. Get Back in the Box (2005)
  8. Screenagers (2006)
  9. Life Inc. (2009)
  10. Program or Be Programmed (2009)
  11. Open Source Democracy (2015)
  12. Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus (2016)
  13. Team Human (2019)

Novels Book Covers

Graphic Novels Book Covers

Non fiction Book Covers

Douglas Rushkoff Books Overview

Cyberia

This is an ideas led, exuberant documentary about the converging strands of a new era, the empowerments of cyber technology, and the precipitation of new ways of life. Originally written in 1994, it outlines the strands of the cyber subculture as it was emerging the favored drugs, the influential individuals, the hackers and their motivations, the science chaos and the complexity of fractuals. This book will endure as a reminder of how modern cyberculture came about a note to the future form an individual perceptive enough to grasp the profound effects of the cyber revolution.

The Cyber Tarot

While beginners will find it fun and easy, this is also the only current tarot software with the speed and versatility required by advanced users. It performs rapid shuffles and readings unlike the frustratingly slow special effects in CD ROM tarot. It is also the only program with a choice of two graphically brilliant decks Rider Waite, the world’s most popular tarot deck, and the unique Cyber deck, the first tarot cards to exist solely in electronic form. System Requirements: IBM or compatible 386DX or higher; Windows 3.1; 4MB RAM; hard drive; mouse; VGA or higher; soundboard recommended but not necessary; Windows 3.1 sound or higher.

Playing the Future

A provocative look at how kids’ culture can give us the tools for survival in the increasingly complex 21st century. Do ‘The Simpsons’ represent a leap forward in media consciousness? Do Sega video games and channel surfing offer new strategies for coping in a world fraught with unpredictability? Can raves, snowboarding, or online chatting teach us something about adapting to cultural change? Douglas Rushkoff, ‘one of the great thinkers and writers of our time’ Timothy Leary says yes, yes, and yes. Revised and updated with a new introduction by the author Hailed as ‘the brilliant heir to Marshall McLuhan’ New Perspectives Quarterly. Rushkoff has been a consultant to Fortune 500 companies on the new media: ‘When Douglas Rushkoff speaks, TV executives and programmers listen and pay him well to explain how to reach young viewers.’ New York Times Rushkoff’s articles on pop culture, media, and technology have appeared in Esquire, Details, GQ, Paper, Wired, and Time Rushkoff has written a regular weekly column for The New York Times Syndicate, and currently writes regularly for The London Guardian and The Australian Rushkoff has appeared on CNN, ‘Larry King Live,’ ‘Frontline,’ ‘Bill Moyers,’ BBC News, CNBC, MSNBC, FOX, CBC, NPR, ‘NBC Nightly News,’ WOR, KQED, and dozens of other television and radio programs’An exuberant progressive, Rushkoff contends that kids today, who were weaned on Macintosh and MTV, have developed adaptive strategies to live in a mediasphere in which CNN seems less real than Pulp Fiction…
. Rushkoff gently nudges us to loosen up and celebrate the pace of change in which our kids have learned to thrive…
it’s hard to argue with his contention that a hearty dose of the Net would give us a fighting chance of learning about the future that our children already know.’ San Francisco Chronicle’Makes dazzling links between chaos theory and Rodney King, snowboarding and William Gibson, rave culture and Star Wars…
the literary equivalent of U2’s Zoo TV.’ Vox

Ecstasy Club

‘A darkly comic contemporary fable: a brave, very funny, very knowing trip through the neo psychedelic substrate of the wired world.’ William Gibson, bestselling author of Neuromancer and Idoru Douglas Rushkoff the foremost authority on cyberculture and author of Cyberia, Media Virus and Playing the Future has penned the ultimate novel for our fast and furious times. A wired in thrill ride into the here and now of tripping, raving, net surfing…
and beyond. ‘An eerie tale of 20 somethings caught up in an increasingly trippy world of homegrown religion. Set in an abandoned piano factory in Oakland, CA., Rushkoff’s novel drops several characters hackster, hipster, hustler, hippie into a pop culture Cuisinart along with a nice Jewish boy, and then spins them off into an intricate plot that leads to a showdown with the leader of a rival cultlike group.’ New York Times

Exit Strategy

Douglas Rushkoff’s latest salvo on complacent media culture, set in 2008, features Jamie Cohen, a young hacker who, like the biblical Joseph, suffers betrayal and then penance via the talk show circuit before joining forces with a venture capitalist determined to turn everyone into mindless consumers. Meanwhile, Jamie s former pals have developed a way to kill the Web s and the stock market s profit making capacities. A dazzling satire of 1990s dot com mania, this McLuhanesque cultural critique establishes a new publishing precedent: it is the first open source ebook, annotated by online readers. This first print edition includes the best of their footnotes chosen by the author.

Club Zero-G

Douglas Rushkoff, author of eight books on media and culture, as well as the novels Ecstasy Club and Exit Strategy, marks his graphic novel debut with Club Zero G. Teaming with Canadian independent comic artist Steph Dumais, Rushkoff has delivered America’s answer to Japan s anim : a mind altering journey into a universe where consensus reality is up for grabs. The story follows Zeke, a gangly, unpopular, 19 year old college student a townie who also happens to attend the elite college in his community who has discovered a terrific new club where he is accepted and popular. There s only one catch: everyone at the club is dreaming. It only exists in the shared dream consciousness of its participants. If at all. For there s the rub: Zeke s friends think he is simply going crazy. His girlfriend in the club won t even acknowledge his existence in real life. As Zeke descends further into the Club Zero G reality, he learns that this shared dream space is actually a psychic field created by four mutant children from the future the last of their kind, conceived by human space travelers in zero gravity and exhibiting strange deformities and abilities. Living in a future where independent thinking is considered a threat to consensus, they are hunted by the authorities, and seek the help of teens from the 21st century who, they hope, can still alter the course of reality. But Zeke eventually learns this is all a setup, and he is being used by the militaries of the present and the future as a portal into the psychic field of the Zero G kids, so they can be destroyed. Unless, of course, he is just going mad. The battle for Zeke s mind becomes an interdimensional battle for reality itself, in this daring, adult, American, anim adventure.

A.D.D

The Adolescent Demo Division are the world’s luckiest teen gamers. Raised from birth to test media, appear on reality TV and enjoy the fruits of corporate culture, the squad develop special abilities that make them the envy of the world and a grave concern to their keepers. One by one, they ‘graduate’ to new levels that are not what they seem. But their heightened abilities can only take them so far as the ultimate search for their birth families leads to an inconceivably harrowing discovery. Written by Douglas Rushkoff, world renowned media theorist, Frontline TV correspondent and author Ecstasy Club, Media Virus and Program or Be Programmed, TESTAMENT, with full color art by Goran Sudzuka and Jose Marzan Jr. Y: THE LAST MAN.

Media Virus!

‘The brilliant heir to McLuhan.’ New Perspectives QuarterlyBold, daring, and provocative, Douglas Rushkoff examines the intricate ways in which popular media both manipulates and is manipulated by those who tap into its power. If the medium is the message, then what sort of messages are infecting our culture through the ever expanding media viruses of the ‘datasphere’?

Coercion

An investigation into the influence techniques of the hidden persuaders in the media, in politics, and in business who are every day making more and more of our decisions for us, from a writer hailed as the ‘brilliant heir to Marshall McLuhan’ by New Perspectives Quarterly.

They say that human beings use only ten percent of their brains. They say the corner office is a position of power. They say you haven’t met your deductible.

Who, exactly, are ‘they’? More important, why do we listen to them?

In Coercion Douglas Rushkoff argues that we each have our own ‘theys’ bosses, experts, and authorities both real and imaginary who have taken over much of the decision making power in our lives. Unfortunately, not everyone to whom we surrender this control has our best interests at heart. What’s most troubling is that the more we try to resist their efforts at persuasion, the more effort they in turn put into finding increasingly sophisticated and invisible methods of Coercion. Indeed, the last fifty years have been marked by a kind of arms race between these authorities and our selves.

Douglas Rushkoff is in a unique position to guide us through these hazardous societal influences. Having for years been the champion of the new media, the Internet, and the liberating forces of interactive technology, he now examines the process through which such innovations are being co opted by the powers that be. Rushkoff’s message is a wake up call for anyone who has the uncomfortable sense that our actions are being shaped by forces beyond our control. /Content /EditorialReview EditorialReview Source Amazon. com Review /Source Content In 1994’s Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace, Douglas Rushkoff extolled the democratic promise of the then emergent Internet, but the once optimistic author has grown a bit disillusioned with what the Net and the rest of the world has become. His exuberantly written, disturbing Coercion may induce paranoia in readers as it illuminates the countless ways marketing has insinuated itself not just into every aspect of Western culture but into our individual lives. Rushkoff opens with a series of pronouncements: ‘They say human beings use only ten percent of their brains…
. They say Prozac alleviates depression.’ But ‘who, exactly, are ‘they,” he asks, and ‘why do we listen to them?’

Marketing continues to grow more aggressive, and Rushkoff tracks the increasingly coercive techniques it employs to ingrain its message in the minds of consumers, as well as the results: toddlers can recognize the golden arches of McDonald’s, young rebels get tattooed with the Nike swoosh, and news stories are increasingly taken verbatim from company press releases. ‘Corporations and consumers are in a coercive arms race,’ argues Rushkoff. ‘Every effort we make to regain authority over our actions is met by an even greater effort to usurp it.’ As he surveys the visual, aural, and scented shopping environment and interviews salesmen, public relations men, telemarketers, admen, and consumers, Rushkoff who admits to being one of ‘them’ in his occasional capacity as paid corporate consultant concludes that ‘they’ are just ‘us’ and that the only way the process of Coercion can be reversed is to refuse to comply. ‘Without us,’ he assures, ‘they don’t exist.’ Kera Bolonik

Nothing Sacred

Acclaimed writer and thinker Douglas Rushkoff, author of Ecstasy Club and Coercion, has written perhaps the most important and controversial book on Judaism in a generation. As the religion stands on the brink of becoming irrelevant to the very people who look to it for answers, Nothing Sacred takes aim at its problems and offers startling and clearheaded solutions based on Judaism’s core values and teachings. Disaffected by their synagogues emphasis on self preservation and obsession with intermarriage, most Jews looking for an intelligent inquiry into the nature of spirituality have turned elsewhere, or nowhere. Meanwhile, faced with the chaos of modern life, returnees run back to Judaism with a blind and desperate faith and are quickly absorbed by outreach organizations that in return for money offer compelling evidence that God exists, that the Jews are, indeed, the Lord s chosen people, and that those who adhere to this righteous path will never have to ask themselves another difficult question again. Ironically, the texts and practices making up Judaism were designed to avoid just such a scenario. Jewish tradition stresses transparency, open ended inquiry, assimilation of the foreign, and a commitment to conscious living. Judaism invites inquiry and change. It is an open source tradition one born out of revolution, committed to evolution, and willing to undergo renaissance at a moment s notice. But, unfortunately, some of the very institutions created to protect the religion and its people are now suffocating them. If the Jewish tradition is actually one of participation in the greater culture, a willingness to wrestle with sacred beliefs, and a refusal to submit blindly to icons that just don t make sense to us, then the lapsed Jews may truly be our most promising members. Why won t they engage with the synagogue, and how can they be made to feel more welcome?Nothing Sacred is a bold and brilliant book, attempting to do nothing less than tear down our often false preconceptions about Judaism and build in their place a religion made relevant for the future. From the Hardcover edition.

Get Back in the Box

On a landscape that seems to be transforming itself with every new technology, marketing tactic, or investment strategy, businesses rush to embrace change by trading in their competencies or shifting their focus altogether. All in the name of innovation. But this endless worrying, wriggling, and trend watching only alienates companies from whatever it is they really do best. In the midst of the headlong rush to think ‘outside the box,’ the full engagement responsible for true innovation is lost. New consultants, new packaging, new marketing schemes, or even new CEOs are no substitute for the evolution of our own expertise as individuals and as businesses. Indeed, for all their talk about innovation, most companies today are still scared to death of it. To Douglas Rushkoff, this disconnect is not only predictable but welcome. It marks the happy end of a business cycle that began as long ago as the Renaissance, and ended with the renaissance in creativity and collaboration we’re going through today. The age of mass production, mass media, and mass marketing may be over, but so, too, is the alienation it engendered between producers and consumers, managers and employees, executives and shareholders, and, worst of all, businesses and their own core values and competencies. American enterprise, in particular, is at a crossroads. Having for too long replaced innovation with acquisitions, tactics, efficiencies, and ad campaigns, many businesses have dangerously lost touch with the process and fun of discovery. ‘American companies are obsessed with window dressing,’ Rushkoff writes, ‘because they’re reluctant, no, afraid to look at whatever it is they really do and evaluate it from the inside out. When things are down, CEOs look to consultants and marketers to rethink, rebrand, or repackage whatever it is they are selling, when they should be getting back on the factory floor, into the stores, or out to the research labs where their product is actually made, sold, or conceived.’ Rushkoff backs up his arguments with a myriad of intriguing historical examples as well as familiar gut checks from the dumbwaiter and open source to Volkswagen and The Gap in this accessible, thought provoking, and immediately applicable set of insights. Here’s all the help innovators of this era need to reconnect with their own core competencies as well as the passion fueling them.

Screenagers

This book makes a far reaching, accessible case the positive impact that digital technologies will have on our ability to participate more actively a thoughtfully in the future. The author looks to 1 world of young people he calls ‘Screenagers‘ clues about the future landscape. This brand new updated version of includes not just new examples but new ideas and conclusions drawn based on years of experience watching these ideas become incorporated into academic, business, education and culture.

Life Inc.

This didn t just happen.

In Life Inc., award winning writer, documentary filmmaker, and scholar Douglas Rushkoff traces how corporations went from being convenient legal fictions to being the dominant fact of contemporary life. Indeed, as Rushkoff shows, most Americans have so willingly adopted the values of corporations that they re no longer even aware of it.

This fascinating journey, from the late Middle Ages to today, reveals the roots of our debacle. From the founding of the first chartered monopoly to the branding of the self; from the invention of central currency to the privatization of banking; from the birth of the modern, self interested individual to his exploitation through the false ideal of the single family home; from the Victorian Great Exhibition to the solipsism of MySpace the corporation has infiltrated all aspects of our daily lives. Life Inc.i>. exposes why we see our homes as investments rather than places to live, our 401k plans as the ultimate measure of success, and the Internet as just another place to do business.

Most of all, Life Inc. shows how the current financial crisis is actually an opportunity to reverse this six hundred year old trend and to begin to create, invest, and transact directly rather than outsource all this activity to institutions that exist solely for their own sakes.

Corporatism didn t evolve naturally. The landscape on which we are living the operating system on which we are now running our social software was invented by people, sold to us as a better way of life, supported by myths, and ultimately allowed to develop into a self sustaining reality. It is a map that has replaced the territory.

Rushkoff illuminates both how we ve become disconnected from our world and how we can reconnect to our towns, to the value we can create, and, mostly, to one another. As the speculative economy collapses under its own weight, Life Inc. shows us how to build a real and human scaled society to take its place.

Program or Be Programmed

Today’s leading media theorist offers everyone a practical yet mind blowing guide to our digital world. The debate over whether the Net is good or bad for us fills the airwaves and the blogosphere. But for all the heat of claim and counter claim, the argument is essentially beside the point: it’s here; it’s everywhere. The real question is, do we direct technology, or do we let ourselves be directed by it and those who have mastered it? Choose the former writes Rushkoff, and you gain access to the control panel of civilization. Choose the latter, and it could be the last real choice you get to make. In ten chapters, composed of ten commands, accompanied by original illustrations from comic artist Leland Purvis, Rushkoff provides cyberenthusiasts and technophobes alike with the guidelines to navigate this new universe. In this spirited, accessible poetics of new media, Rushkoff picks up where Marshall McLuhan left off, helping readers come to recognize programming as the new literacy of the digital age and as a template through which to see beyond social conventions and power structures that have vexed us for centuries. This is a friendly little book with a big and actionable message. World renowned media theorist and counterculture figure Douglas Rushkoff is the originator of ideas such as viral media, social currency and screenagers. He has been at the forefront of digital society from its beginning, predicting the rise of the net, the dotcom boom and bust, as well as today’s financial crisis. He is a familiar voice on NPR, and correspondent for Frontline Digital Nation. Here’s the first field manual on how to remain human on the internet. Kevin Kelly, What Technology Wants Rushkoff is damn smart. As someone who understood the digital revolution faster and better than almost anyone, he shows how the internet is a social transformer that should change the way your business culture operates. Walter Isaacson

Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus

From the imagination of best selling author Douglas Rushkoff, one of the most iconoclastic and acclaimed minds of our era, comes a graphic novel series that exposes the ‘real’ Bible as it was actually written, and reveals how its mythic tales are repeated today. Grad student Jake Stern leads an underground band of renegades that uses any means necessary to combat the frightening threats to freedom that permeate the world. They employ technology, alchemy, media hacking and mysticism to fight a modern threat that has its roots in ancient stories destined to recur in the modern age.

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