Your current work in progress is entitled “Program or be programmed.” What is it about?

In most of history, whenever a new medium becomes available, human beings learn both sides of that medium. We got language and people learned not just how to hear but how to speak as well. We got text and people learned not just how to read but how to write. Now we’re getting programming, but people are only learning how to use it, not how to make it. As we relinquish authority over our programs, we are destined to become programs ourselves. My book is about the importance of understanding the way the tools that you’re using work. Of understanding that every website you use has been designed by somebody else with a purpose in mind. It’s not a pre-existing condition of the universe. In some ways it’s a very simple book, because I explain very clearly what to do and what not to do. It consists of ten commands for a digital age. The most important one of all is the last one: “Program or be programmed”.

What other rules are there?

Digital media haver very strong biases. For example, there is a particular time bias. These tools don’t exist in time. These tools are also biased against place – digital media encourage long distance over short distance. Then there’s a bias we could call “choice” – digital media demand choice, everything has to be discrete. They are biased against complexity. They exist on multiple scales but they appear to make everything the same scale; uncrecognized, that’s potentially dangerous. On top of that, the human experience is biased out of body, which leads to many strange behaviors. The net is biased towards contact rather than content. Towards facts, and away from stories. And towards a limited kind of openness. It seems as if everything’s open but it’s really only open to Google. Finally, they’re biased towards those who know how to program, and away from those who don’t.

[Editor’s note: click here for a full list of Rushkoff’s ten commands.]

Your first command is “Thou shall not be always on”. Do we even have a choice when it comes to being on or offline?

The fact that you think there may not be a choice is the frightening part! But you don’t have to be “on” all the time. Your nervous system doesn’t even want that. Today there are technologies available that let you filter better. I can have my phone set so it will only ring if my wife calls, for instance. But then I’m not always on. Right now being able to afford to be online, to have your iPad or your 3G-modem, is considered positive for your social status. But remember beepers? Who wears a beeper? It was the repairman for the washing machine. I definitely think it’s going to turn around the other way. The disadvantage will be having to be always on and the advantage will be the luxury of not being online. I understand that a computer which isn’t connected is no longer as useful. But that’s very different. It’s one thing for your computer to be online all the time, and quite another for you to be.

So we have the option of withdrawing ourselves from the media. But do we also have the option of using the biases for our own purpose?

That’s what I’m arguing. All the biases can support you or not. If you understand the bias of time, you are able to decide to be online or offline. Understanding the bias of place makes you understand that it is supportive of long distance communication, but not of up-close communication. Or the factor of complexity. If I understand that the net is going to have reduced complexity then I’m going use it for simple and immediate answers. I’m not going to use it for things that I want to contemplate more deeply. If you understand the biases of media, you can use media appropriately, in a way that’s consistent and supporting to you as a person, as an organism, not just to you as a consumer.

So your point is not simply to avoid the net.

No, but I’m critical of people who use it stupidly. Net use requires an understanding of how these interfaces work; what behaviors they want you to have. These things are not natural but were made by people and companies who want to make money. Some of the encouraged behaviors are good for those companies, and some of them are random. Nobody intended them, but they just are. If you don’t understand the biases of the world you’re in, then it’s very hard to operate in it effectively.

Many admire younger generations because digital media and behavior seem to come so “naturally” to them. Representing themselves online, for instance.

In most studies, young people actually seem to have a less sophisticated and a less nuanced approach to identity online. They don’t seem to realize the consequences of their actions. They’re worse at distinguishing between what’s real and what’s fake. Many people say, “Oh, that’s just because they’re more open or more giving.” But when you actually talk to young people and explain to them what’s going on, they are horrified and they change their behavior. To my mind, they’re not more sophisticated, they’re less.

Can you give us one such horrifying example?

That everything they type stays there forever. That there is no longer a local identity, only an international one. There is no neighborhood you can move to, no social group you can go to, to get away from what’s just happened. The ability to experiment as a young person is gone. You can look at the inability of young people to exercise authority over their privacy online as a premonition of a future in which we will all know everything everybody else is doing anyway. So in one sense that makes them more advanced. But they seem to be experimenting with this unconsciously rather than consciously. And that’s a little bit less effective than it might be.

Who is responsible for that kind of media literacy?

Right now me. After me, hopefully teachers, schools. Just like we used to learn how to read and write, we need to learn to understand these environments. It’s a life skill.

In your last book, “Life Inc”, you deal with the commodification of our lives. Are there any parallels with your current work?

They have the same message about understanding what the programs you’re living with were intended to do. “Life Inc.” looks at the invention of central currency and the corporation. It shows that both were invented to monopolize access to capital and to prevent regular people from doing business for and amongst themselves.

If you understand these programs, you’re empowered to reclaim your ability to do real business – actually providing goods and services for other people, who then exchange the value that they’ve created. Right now, most people don’t make anything and work for corporations that don’t make anything. They don’t have any competency. But it turns out that most people can create value, they can do things and even enjoy it.

So it’s also about a way of becoming happier?

I wrote a book a while back called “Get back in the box”. It was about how being good at the thing you do is really good for business. I argued that creating a culture of competence is a lot of fun. When you’re really good at something and committed to getting better incrementally over time, and when you’re part of a culture which values that, then everybody has a good time. Then you don’t need extrinsic rewards in order to make people satisfied. What you win is more authority over what you do next. You get to be at the creative core of your field or industry. […] The modern age has been characterized by industrialization. And industrialization meant disconnecting the worker from competence. But that’s over. That stopped working. It has reached the point of diminishing returns, both in terms of human satisfaction and in terms of money.

And what is the next step?

A culture of knowledge, learning and awareness. It’s really just a return to competence. Leaning how to do things.