“Austin has become the epicenter of exponential growth.” -Douglass Rushkoff
Douglas Rushkoff is one of America’s most important intellectuals, authors, and teachers. In March, Rushkoff spoke at South By Southwest about the changes he has witnessed at the conference, in Austin, and the culture at large, thanks to technology’s imprint.
It’s a ball-buster of a talk. He’s a funny, playful man who isn’t afraid to name names. He calls out Wired Magazine, Kevin Kelly, SXSW, and the city of Austin, among others, for advancing the corporate web and amplifying the bland autonomous culture that results.
Rushkoff recalls a time not too long ago when the internet, and those who were fascinated by it, were experimental misfits and psychedelic adventurers. There was no money in it then. Then, there was.
This Renaissance that we were experiencing became contextualized as a revolution, particularly a revolution in business. And the reason they contextualized it as a revolution is because it was not a ‘revolution’ they were after, but a reactionary force.
Rushkoff suggests that South By and Austin shifted their focus from fostering “human possibilities” to promoting technology for “surveillance and control.”
That hurts!
We started this trip in Austin with a set and setting of weird humans collectively creating new possibilities. And we reformed or revised that set and setting to using technology on people in order to ensure specific outcomes…And no wonder we are having a bad trip.
He discusses how the capitalists do it. He says algorithmic curation is a form of autotuning, where technology homogenizes human behavior by reinforcing statistical predictability. Which, of course, can be monetized, as we’ve seen. He deftly points to the danger.
The more that we allow our technologies to autotune us — and I would argue AI does that too because everything AI gives you is the most probable response— what happens is it will revert our civilization to the mean.
Rushkoff is a sharp critic, but he also has hope, and hope spreads. Optimistically, he believes that we can pivot from a digital culture of utilitarian exploitation to one that values “sacred expression” and connection between people. He sees our collective weirdness as a form of resistance against dehumanizing systems.
In this context, the desire to “Keep Austin Weird” is a mandate to keep this vibrant, creative city alive and hospitable to humans. To accomplish this kind of work, Rushkoff challenges us to tell new, life-affirming stories that help us create a new reality.
That’s a call to action I can get behind!
We are magicians. We can change the future. And magic is a spectrum. Believe as much as you want. At the very least, we can use language to disable the mind virus of capitalism. That counts as magic, right? Using your words to create a spell that changes the way we think.
…Changing the story changes the way everybody does what they do, you know?
I love that Rushkoff wants us to “use language to disable the mind virus of capitalism.” For many writers, it may become the most important work that we ever do. Whatever form our writing takes, we who use words to make meaning have an obligation to document what’s happening, and to do so in a brutally honest way that is also elegant and artful.
Rushkoff reminds me that it’s not enough to complain about the criminal cabal in charge today, because it fails to inspire and motivate people to act. It’s better and weirder to sift through their garbage and make something meaningful from it.