NYC LOCAL: Wednesday 3 November 2010 NYU: Douglas Rushkoff on Who Whom

[secretary]

<blockquote
  what="official Computers and Society announcement by Evan Korth"
  note="The first meeting announced below is past.
        The second will take place
        Wednesday 3 November 2010 at 3:30 pm."
  edits="one typo corrected">

 Date: Sun, 31 Oct 2010 11:58:14 -0400 (EDT)
 From: Evan Korth <korth@cs.nyu.edu>
 To: Computers_and_society_announcements@cs.nyu.edu

 Monday and Wednesday at 3:30pm.  Hope to see you there.

 e.

 Details:

 Monday, November 1, 2010, 3:30pm, room 109, Warren Weaver Hall, 251 Mercer

 Hilary Mason, Chief Scientist bit.ly

 OMFG privacy is dead and your identity is GONE and I'm reformatting your 
 iphone, too!!

 Really?

 We'll talk about the kinds of data you expose online and the network 
 architecture that makes hiding impossible. We'll examine how different 
 systems harvest and analyze this data, why sharing your data can be a GOOD 
 THING, and what you should know to make informed decisions.

 -----------------------------------------------

 Wednesday, November 3, 2010, 3:30pm, room 109, Warren Weaver Hall, 251 
 Mercer

 Douglas Rushkoff, ITP Adjunct Professor will discuss his new book, Program 
 or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age.

 When human beings acquired language, we learned not just how to listen but 
 how to speak. When we gained literacy, we learned not just how to read but 
 how to write. And as we move into an increasingly digital reality, we must 
 learn not just how to use programs but how to make them.

 Digital tools are not like rakes, steam engines, or even automobiles that 
 we can drive with little understanding of how they work. Digital 
 technology doesn't merely convey our bodies, but ourselves. Our screens 
 are the windows through which we are experiencing, organizing, and 
 interpreting the world in which we live. We are doing more than extending 
 human agency through a new linguistic or communications system. We are 
 replicating the very function of cognition through external, extra-human 
 mechanisms. These tools are not mere extensions of the will of some 
 individual or group, but entities that have the ability to think and 
 operate other components in the neural network?namely, us.

 And while machines once replaced and usurped the value of human labor, 
 computers and networks do more than usurp the value of human thought. They 
 not only copy our intellectual processes?our repeatable programs?but they 
 often discourage our more complex processes?our higher order cognition, 
 contemplation, innovation, and meaning making that should be the reward of 
 'outsourcing' our arithmetic to silicon chips in the 1st place.

 The more humans become involved in their design, the more humanely 
 inspired these tools will end up behaving. At the very least we must come 
 to recognize the biases ? the tendencies- of the technologies we are 
 using. In a digital age, failure to do so could mean relinquishing our 
 nascent collective agency to the
 machines themselves.

 Rushkoff is the media theorist who first coined terms such as 'viral 
 media,' 'social currency,' and 'screenagers.' He is the author of a dozen 
 books on media, culture, and technology, the correspondent for several 
 Frontline documentaries, and has taught at ITP since the mid-90?s.

 Winner of the first Neil Postman award for Career Achievement in Public 
 Intellectual Activity, American media theorist Douglas Rushkoff has 
 written a dozen best-selling books on media and society, including 
 Cyberia, Media Virus, Coercion (winner of the Marshall McLuhan Award), Get 
 Back in the Box, and Life Inc. He has made the PBS 'Frontline' 
 documentariesDigital Nation, The Persuaders, and Merchants of Cool.

 A columnist for The Daily Beast and Arthur Magazine, his articles have 
 been regularly published in The New York Times and Discover, among many 
 other publications. His radio commentaries air on NPR and WFMU, his opeds 
 appear in the New York Times, and he is a familiar face on television, 
 from ABC News to The
 Colbert Report.

 Rushkoff has taught at New York University and the New School, played 
 keyboards for the industrial band PsychicTV, directed for theater and 
 film, and worked as a stage fight choreographer. He lives in New York 
 State with his wife, Barbara, and daughter Mamie.

 Rushkoff's new book, Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital 
 Age is now available exclusively from OR Books (www.orbooks.com 
 [www.orbooks.com]).
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 </blockquote>


 Distributed poC TINC:

 Jay Sulzberger <secretary@lxny.org>
 Corresponding Secretary LXNY
 LXNY is New York's Free Computing Organization.
 http://www.lxny.org