Program or Be Programmed

It’s ready, and I’m delighted to announce it here first: my first book on interactive media, Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age, is now heading to the printer and available for pre-order.

This is an indie book in every sense of the word. It can only be ordered directly from the publisher, OR Books which cuts out a whole lot of corporate middlemen while getting the book out a lot sooner and less expensively.

I’m also glad to be able offer anyone who pre-orders a 15% discount off the book or e-book.

There’s a whole lot more about the book on...
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Voicemail Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry

I had some connectivity issues over the past month, mainly because I changed both cellphone carriers and ISP in the same week after my mom died. And while I’m in iPhone heaven now (more on that later), it took a bit longer to transition from Verizon to AT&T than I expected, particularly because I was dealing with so much else.

It was definitely the wrong week to have switched everything over, as voicemails were falling into the ether precisely when people who needed to express their feelings most wanted to reach me. And although my Gmail ended up being a great backstop for the gobs of misdirected email, a lot of telephony and sms ended up in the abyss.
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Life Inc: finally its facts trickle up

From Bob Herbert today’s NYTimes, courtesy Andrew Mayer:

The recession officially started in December 2007. From the fourth quarter of 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2009, real aggregate output in the U.S., as measured by the gross domestic product, fell by about 2.5 percent. But employers cut their payrolls by 6 percent.

In many cases, bosses told panicked workers who were still on the job that they had to take pay cuts or cuts in hours, or both. And raises were out of the question. The staggering job losses and stagnant wages are central reasons why any real recovery has been so difficult.

“They threw out far more workers and hours than they lost output,” said Professor Sum.
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Essential Reading

I’m putting together something in place of a bibliography for my next book: a VERY short list of essential reading for people who want to understand digital media. I’m thinking of getting it down to ten books or essays.

But which ones?

I want people to understand the biases of media, how interactive media is social, how technology has agendas of its own, how human beings and technology co-evolved, the nature of technology and markets and, perhaps most of all, how to program. (Or how to understand what programming is, even if you don’t want to program yourself.)

So I am really open for suggestions. I’m currently looking at
Out of Control – Kevin Kelly
Hacker...
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Finished Another Book

Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age.

Should be out by the end of September, in print and e-formats, from the absolutely independent publisher OR Books.

This is going to be very interesting.

Harvey Pekar died

I wasn’t expecting this one. I hope he gets to meet my mom.

Makes the fact that I’m currently “collaborating” with him on a comic all the more strange. We will still finish it, no matter what.

In brief: Harvey influenced my thinking about writing – and the world – as profoundly as any professor, mentor, or friend I’ve ever had. He was a genuinely good and absolutely brilliant person, who proved that success can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

We love you, Harvey Pekar.

Taking Back the World: The Web Comic

Artist Seth Kushner’s web comic interpretation of me and Life Inc. Fascinating stuff, and the last in a series he has been working on all year for act-i-vate. See it first, here.

Buffett says “We’re coming back!”

But he really means, “please, everybody say we’re coming back!”

In an interview published today in HuffPost, billionaire and investment guru Warren Buffett assured Americans that their economy was on the rise. No depression, just recovery.

But where he revealed his true agenda was in his advice for Obama: speak with “enormous confidence” about the nation’s economic future.

Buffett is trying to take the first step, going out on a limb to speak confidently about the failing economy. He believes – and there’s some merit to this – that if everyone can be made to believe the economy is recovering, then it will recover. Businesses will hire more people and those people will earn more money and...
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Sell

Yes, this is really it. The beginning of a true end-of-cycle economically.

If you own “stocks,” use these bounces to get out completely. If you have to park your money somewhere, consider yourself lucky you have money to park.

The object of the game for those who actually have capital is not how to grow it, but how to keep it. Capital has driven our economy since 1300, and the recent bull market was the end of a cycle that began in the mid-1700′s.

The fact that it is ending is not the end of the world at all. It just means that there’s a whole lot of money out there with no place to go. People...
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Sheila Rushkoff – 1935-2010

My mom passed away this morning, after a long and quite private battle with leukemia. She went her own route with alternative therapies, but ultimately succumbed.

I’ll be a little less responsive than usual for while, so please pardon that – there is a whole lot to take care, but nothing nearly as challenging as attending to her. I am already relieved, and I promise I’ll be back to a renewed pace, with significantly less worries, within a few days.

Photo forthcoming.