Douglas Rushkoff – … everyone is part of the problem.

Recently its all about “growth-hacking”. Workshops, meet-ups, webinars just everywhere this term is around and I’m really wondering why we are not any further. This stunning talk by Douglas Rushkoff  “Distributed: A New OS for the Digital Economy” from SXSW Interactive 2016 brings all this madness on point.

Wikipedia Douglas Rushkoff: “Douglas Rushkoff is an American media theorist, writer, columnist, lecturer, graphic novelist, and documentarian. He is best known for his association with the early cyberpunk culture, and his advocacy of open source solutions to social problems.”

Just some quotes out of this talk:

Twitter is making 500 Mio $ / Quarter = 2  Billion $ revenue a year for  a smart 140 character SMS service. But the people on wall street are saying, this is a complete failure. Instead of staying as a perfect little thing which it is already, in the wall street eyes it has to be THE thing. How odd is this? In his own words: “Old corporate capitalism on new digital steroids” I am not an expert on finance but this just feels wrong. Also he criticises the audience as everyone there seems to use Uber..

But he is not only moaning about the current (sad) state of all, he has some ideas of how simple it can be to invite needed (if not inevitable) change given current conditions.

–> “Digital tech was supposed to usher in an age of prosperity, but so far it has put industrial capitalism on steroids. Social networks surrender their missions to data mining, and banks abandon investing for algorithms all to stoke growth. Startups sell for billions but destroy more jobs and markets than they create.”