how to survive being chronically online

In his latest work, Program or Be Programmed , the 15th anniversary edition, Rushkoff proposes four methods to avoid being programmed by digital technology, and to instead become the programmers of our world.

What we require is to:

1. Denaturalize power by revealing social constructions which are ideas we merely invented, and are not pre-existing laws w

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That manual step is something we can introduce in digital notes too. The benefits? You can filter ideas that are not worth coping over into your actual notes. Also, you can wrestle and develop ideas when you have more time to think about them.

To feel creatively and intellectually alive, you have to stop mindlessly consuming the Internet and start mindfully curating it.

The collection of so much personalized data—around what time of day we turn to Sade or how many seconds of a NewJeans song we play—suggests a future without risk, one in which we will never be exposed to anything we may not want to hear.

I have thousands of photos of my children but few that I’ve set aside to revisit. I have records of virtually every text I’ve sent since I was in college but no idea how to find the ones that meant something. I spent years blasting my thoughts to millions of people on X and Facebook even as I fell behind on correspondence with dear friends. I have ... See more

she was an early critic of how the streaming economy relies less on delivering hit tunes than on keeping us within a narrow gradient of chill vibes

The anxiety isn't determined by the presence or absence of code. It comes from a lack of transparency and control. You are susceptible whether or not TikTok exists, whether or not you delete it. Logging off is one tool, but it will not alone cure you.