Our society has reoriented itself to the present moment. Everything is live, real time, and always-on. Itโs not a mere speeding up, however much our lifestyles and technologies have accelerated the rate at which we attempt to do things. Itโs more of a diminishment of anything that isnโt happening right nowโand the onslaught of everything that supposedly is.
Douglas RushkoffMost simply, 'present shock' is the human response to living in a world that's always on real time and simultaneous. You know, in some ways it's the impact of living in a digital environment, and in other ways it's just really what happens when you stop leaning so forward to the millennium and you finally arrive there.
Douglas RushkoffWhile learning to code may have once been an arduous or expensive process, the college dropouts who developed Codecademy have democratized coding as surely as Gutenberg democratized text. Anyone can go to Codecademy and start learning and creating code through their simple, fun, interactive window, for free.
Douglas RushkoffThe horrible truth is we are linear beings; we can't multitask, and we shouldn't keep interrupting important connections to each other with the latest message coming in.
Douglas RushkoffFantasy sports went a long way toward developing the sabermetrics formulas used not only by oddsmakers but general managers in hiring players. So the amateur fantasists ended up creating some of the algorithms that Oakland GM Billy Bean's statisticians used to win games with less salary money available for star players.
Douglas RushkoffNo matter how invasive the technologies at their disposal, marketers and pollsters never come to terms with the living process through which people choose products or candidates; they are looking at what people just bought or thought, and making calculations based on that after-the-fact data.
Douglas Rushkoff