Technology has moved away from sharing and toward ownership. This suits software and hardware companies just fine: They create new, bloated programs that require more disk space and processing power. We buy bigger, faster computers, which then require more complex operating systems, and so on.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the trend in technology towards ownership rather than sharing, highlighting the cycle of consumerism it creates.
Douglas Rushkoff's quote emphasizes the shift in technology from collaborative sharing to individual ownership. This trend benefits companies that produce increasingly complex and resource-heavy software and hardware, which in turn compels consumers to continuously upgrade their devices and systems, perpetuating a cycle of consumption and dependency on technology.
In practice
In a discussion about the latest tech trends at a conference, one might say, 'As Douglas Rushkoff points out, technology has moved away from sharing and toward ownership.'
Like most early enthusiasts, I always thought the way the Internet encouraged multitasking made users less vulnerable to manipulation, while simultaneously exploiting even more of our brain's capacity than before. Apparently not.
The faux now of Twitter updates and things pinging at you - all the pulses from digitality that we try to keep up with because we sense that there's something going on that we need to tap into - are artifacts, or symptoms of living in this atemporal reality. And it's not any worse than living in the 'time is money' reality that we're leaving.
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Brains are tricky and adaptable organs. For all the 'neuroplasticity' allowing our brains to reconfigure themselves to the biases of our computers, we are just as neuroplastic in our ability to eventually recover and adapt.
As popular culture becomes more presentist, we move away from entertainment as the vicarious experience of a narrative - as watching someone else's story - and much more toward enacting one's own story. Moving away from myths and toward fantasy role-playing games, away from movies and toward videogames.
The first step toward maintaining autonomy in any programmed environment is to be aware that there's programming going on. It's as simple as understanding the commercials are there to help sell things. And that TV shows are there to sell commercials, and so on.
There's no magic line between an application and an operating system that some bureaucrat in Washington should draw.
More and more we are into communications; and less and less into communication.
Nobody wants to buy a $60,000 electric Civic. But people will pay $90,000 for an electric sports car.
Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!
Today, the smartphone in your pocket has a high-quality digital camera. Everyone - not just artists - is a photographer, and the explosion of photos taken annually proves it.
Google, Microsoft and Yahoo should be developing new technologies to bypass government sensors and barriers to the Internet; but instead, they agreed to guard the gates themselves.
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