Introduction

 

In Douglas Rushkoff’s book, Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age, Rushkoff analyzes the debate between whether the Internet is good or bad for us. To Rushkoff, the point is that it is here and everywhere, and there is nothing we can do about that. The real question that Rushkoff answers is whether we direct technology, or do we let ourselves be directed by it and the ones who have mastered the technology. Rushkoff states, “Choose the former, and you gain access to the control panel of civilization. Choose the latter, and it could be the last real choice you get to make (Rushkoff, 2011: 13).”

Rushkoff effectively supports this argument by dividing the book up into ten chapters, or commands, that are biases of the media. A bias is “simply a leaning- a tendency to promote one set of behaviors over another (Rushkoff, 2011: 26).” All media and technologies have biases, even if we don’t know it. Rushkoff believes that these ten “biases of the media through which we engage with the world can differentiate between what we intend, and what the machines we’re using intend for us (Rushkoff, 2011: 27).” Rushkoff thinks that everyone should know and understand these ten biases of media in order to understand and partake in the digital age we are living in, which is what he tries to convey throughout his book in order for us as a society to program and not be programmed.