RUSHKOFF'S ALGORITHM [1]

"Like the participants of failed cultural eras before our own, we have embraced the new technologies and literacies of our age without actually learning how they work and work on us," claims writer and media theorist Douglas Rushkoff [4], in a recent email. He continues:

The 22-letter alphabet did not lead to a society of literate Israelite readers, but a society of hearers, who would gather to hear the Torah scroll read to them by a priest. The printing press and television set did not lead to a society of writers and producers, but one of readers and viewers, who were free to enjoy their own perspective on the creations of an elite with access to the new tools of production. And the computer has not led to a society of programmers, but one of bloggers -- free to write whatever we please, but utterly unaware of the underlying biases of the interfaces and windows that have been programmed for us.

I'd dropped a line to Rushkoff to ask him to explain the following algorithm, titled "Social Control as a Function of Media," which he contributed recently to a special exhibition (on "Formulae for the 21st Century [5]") at the Serpentine Gallery in the UK. (The question was asked by the same folks who brought us recent books in which bleeding-edge thinkers answer questions like, "What Is Your Dangerous Idea? [6]")

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What does this algorithm, which is the subject of his next book ("The Slope: Corporatism and the Myth of Self Interest"), have to do with bloggers like me, not to mention Rushkoff himself? He explains:

Our controllers -- be they pharaohs, kings or corporations -- always remain one dimensional leap beyond us. When we learn to read, they gain monopoly over the presses. As we now gain access to Internet distribution of our text, they create the framework for such publication -- blogs, basically -- by monopolizing the programs, interface, and conduit. Worse, we tend to remain unaware of the new context shaping all our activity. And that's why no matter how much of a revolution Time magazine grants us by calling us "people of the year," we're still paying them for our access, and their sister corporations for our technologies.

As Curly from "The Three Stooges" used to say, I resemble that remark!