Digital technology was supposed to usher in a new age of distributed prosperity, but so far it has been used to put industrial capitalism on steroids. It’s not technology’s fault, but that of an extractive, growth-driven, economic operating system that has reached the limits of its ability to serve anyone, rich or poor, human or corporate. Robots threaten our jobs while algorithms drain our portfolios. But there must be a better response to the lopsided returns of the digital economy than to throw rocks at the shuttle buses carrying Google employees to their jobs, as protesters did in December 2013.
In this groundbreaking book, acclaimed media scholar and technology author Douglas Rushkoff calls on us to abandon the monopolist, winner-takes-all values we are unwittingly embedding into the digital economy, and to embrace the more distributed possibilities of these platforms. He shows how we can optimize every aspect of the economy—from central currency and debt to corporations and labor—to create sustainable prosperity for business and people alike.
