Whose Story is This, Anyway? When Readers Become Writers

Douglas Rushkoff ("Program or Be Programmed")

9:25am Monday, 02/11/2008

Broadway Ballroom

New media is a challenge to anyone and everyone who ever used the word “author.” Interactive technologies are biased against sole authorship, leaning heavily instead towards collaboration. But then what happens to the authority of the author – much less the “copyright” holder? Is it time to give away our text in the hopes of getting revenue from some other source? Worse, have we any choice but to give away our stories to audiences who may use and change them beyond our control?

Douglas Rushkoff

"Program or Be Programmed"

Winner of the first Neil Postman award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity, Douglas Rushkoff is an author, teacher, and documentarian who focuses on the ways people, cultures, and institutions create, share, and influence each other’s values. He sees “media” as the landscape where this interaction takes place, and “literacy” as the ability to participate consciously in it.

His ten best-selling books on new media and popular culture have been translated to over thirty languages. They include Cyberia, Media Virus, Playing the Future, Nothing Sacred: The Truth about Judaism, and Coercion, winner of the Marshall Mcluhan Award for best media book. Rushkoff also wrote the acclaimed novels Ecstasy Club and Exit Strategy and graphic novel, Club Zero-G. He has just finished a book for HarperBusiness, applying renaissance principles to today’s complex economic landscape, Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out. He’s now writing a monthly comic book for Vertigo called Testament.