Doug Rushkoff teaching “Technologies of Persuasion”

IEET Fellow Doug Rushkoff reports on his new book project on corporatism and his upcoming class on “technologies of persuasion”.

Testament, my comic series, will be coming to a close early next year. And I’ve put the next series on hold to focus on my family and my next big book on corporatism.

(3/10: The working title of the book is “Corporatism: How we surrendered values for value, meaning for markets, and citizenship for customer service.” But that’s really a placeholder for a more precise and, hopefully, provocative/evocative title. I’m hoping to develop something more useful than a leftist/Marxist response to a market-driven culture, and instead look at the co-evolution of the notions of the “self” and the corporation - how these two constructions feed off one another.)

Everything else I’m doing both here online and in my writing will be focused on the corporatism investigation, and there will be lots of ways to get involved. My website is in the midst of a major upgrade. The main activity there will be to host a series of discussions and inquiries into the nature of agency and autonomy since the renaissance.

I’ll also be leading a seminar through the MLA (MaybeLogicAcademy - an online university founded by Robert Anton Wilson and others), tentatively called Technologies of Persuasion (based on my NYU course) - but it will also cover the systemic and market forces compromising our abilities to create communities, generate value, and challenge the status quo. I really will be depending on you this time more than ever before to help me find the best examples and articulate my case.

Off to Canada this week (to speak to manufacturers) and St. Louis the week after (to speak to media literacy advocates). Then we begin.

Link