Public Affairs Blog

Fall 2012 Convocation Lecturer: Doug Rushkoff

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Speaker: Doug Rushkoff

Date: Thursday, October 6, 2011
Time: 7:00 p.m – 8:30 p.m. 
Location: Plaster Student Union Theater

Media and technology theorist Douglas Rushkoff is one of today’s most engaging and perceptive commentators on the impact of technology and digital media on organizations and society. A globally recognized thought leader on marketing and internet culture, he explores how interactive communications affect how we live and work.

The originator of terms and ideas from “viral media” to “screenagers” and “social currency,” Rushkoff is the author of 12 books on technology, media and pop culture, including Coercion, Media Virus, Playing the Future and Cyberia, the first book on cyber culture. His works have been translated into over 25 languages.
Ruskoff’s Get Back in the Box: Innovation From the Inside Out is a thought-provoking examination of the influence of interactive communications on business. He looks at how the new renaissance in creativity and collaboration, ushered in by the internet, gives organizations the freedom to return to core competencies and reconnect with the passion that fuels true innovation.

In his new book, Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age, he shows us how we can take command of new technologies and gain access to the control panel of civilization. According to Rushkoff, programming will become the equivalent of literacy in a digital age. His previous book, Life Inc.: How Corporatism Conqured the World, and How We Can Take It Back, was named one of the best business books of 2009 by The Miami Herald.

Rushkoff received national acclaim as the correspondent for the PBS Frontline documentaries, The Merchants of Cool and The Persuaders. Digital Nation, Frontline’s multiplatform project and television documentary, premiered on PBS in February 2010. A columnist for The Daily Beast, United Airlines Hemispheres magazine, and Meeting Professional International’s One+ Magazine, Rushkoff is a professor of media at New York University and The New School.