Team Human

Digital technology is destroying social bonds with wide-ranging and dire consequences, according to this scattershot jeremiad. Rushkoff (Program or Be Programmed), a professor of media theory and host of NPR’s Team Human podcast, argues that the internet and social media are enacting a “social annihilation” that leaves individuals isolated, alienated, addicted to screens, vulnerable to consumerist propaganda, and imbued with a computer-flavored worldview that makes them “experience people as dehumanized replications of memes” and “treat one another as machines.” These notions, along with anticapitalist posturing, frame a disjointed rehash of leftish sociocultural concerns, from the looming robot takeover to the inauthenticity of digital sound compared to vinyl. Rushkoff’s theorizing is more free-associative metaphor than serious analysis—he contends that “politicians of the digital media environment pull out of global trade blocs and demand the construction of walls” because of the one-versus-zero character of binary computer code—and yields claims about the real world that are often ill-informed or just plain absurd (“We will need a major, civilization-changing innovation to occur on a monthly or even weekly basis in order to support the rate of growth demanded by the underlying [capitalist economy’s] operating system”). People seeking a more connected, sustainable future should look for a better game plan than Rushkoff’s screed. [em](Jan.) [/em]