Present Shock: When
Everything Happens Now
Douglas Rushkoff
Read it in hardback
at 256 pages
As an employee of a
large software distribution company, I see what Douglas Rushkoff calls 'Present
Shock' on a daily basis. While most
people can certainly relate to Rushkoffs example of the dinner/bar situation in
which everyone you met to mingle is instead on their cell phone, that hits home
for everyone, after all; who hasn't experienced this yet? I have seen some
fantastic things, most notably people so absorbed on their laptops that they
have tumbled down stairs or fallen over second story banisters. I also see how future technology will only
cement the charms of a digital life we have now and lay the foundation for even
more integration in the future. There is
no escaping it.
With all of this in
mind, I saw Mr. Rushkoff hocking this book on some late night political satire
show on Comedy Central and figured it might be worth my time.
In Present Shock,
Rushkoff outlines what he believes present shock to be, as opposed to future
shock, as well as why he believes we have found ourselves in this
situation. A kind of cross street
between past and future avenue. While
everyone clings to each Facebook update or Tweet, they fail to realize that
everything on the net is the past and while they think they are more connected
to the present, each entry is a time stamp of the past. Something that makes that dinner/bar ordeal
so painful when it's guilty members could be living in a present only shared
with those around them but choose to immerse with the past instead. The book aims to outline why Mr. Rushkoff
thinks this is and does so through a series of examples (corporate,
consumerism, etc.) along a hazy timeline in which he believes the switch
occurred. Obviously escalated the more
that technology has entered our lives.
The content of the
book is pretty superb as it relates to what he believes present shock to be,
and I loved a lot of the examples he chose to use to convey the feeling. His argument gets significantly more flimsy
with the examples of how we got to where we are and most definitely falls apart
about where we are headed. I lost a lot
of steam as the book was winding down, although I must admit I was on a
vacation where reading was a hard task to complete.
The most stunning
rumination of Rushkoff from Present Shock for me:
"We think of
time as the numbers on the clock, rather than the moments they are meant to
represent" - Rushkoff
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