127: Douglas Rushkoff, part 1: Team Human

You've heard that with social media, Google, and most free services, you're the product. The idea probably provoked thought when you heard it. Now it probably feels old, an ending point.

What if you considered it a starting point? Where does it lead? What does it tell you about yourself, society, the internet, markets, humanity?

Doug Rushkoff follows dozens of ideas like it and weaves them together into a tapestry of a new way of looking at media, individuality, advertising, algorithms, and more.

For example: the internet began as a medium to unite people. Over and over its innovations with the most promise to bring people together instead came to separate us -- Google and Facebook being the biggest examples. They are now the greatest advertising media ever, increasingly getting in your business and personal life as much as you can. Their executives have to testify to Congress for undermining democracy.

How did such results happen? What do they mean? What can we do about it?

A few months ago friends started telling me to listen to Doug Rushkoff, because he talks about media like I do.

It turns out after he wrote many bestselling books and a renowned podcast, just after I heard about him, he wrote a new book, Team Human, and was speaking a few blocks away from me, introduced by his friend and guest of this podcast Seth Godin.

To prepare I listened to his podcast, which I loved, watched his TED talk, which got me thinking, and watched one of his several Frontline episodes, called Generation Like.

Seth introduced us and here's the podcast.

I appear at 48:25 on Team Human episode Book Launch: A Live Team Human Conversation with Douglas Rushkoff and Seth Godin.

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