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here we go folks I know we had some issues I know in the past it has always gone perfectly but today we're going to try our hardest going to try our hardest get [ __ ] together folks put it together this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience Podcast is brought to you by audible.com if you go to audible.com Joo you will get one free audio book and you will get 3 free days of audible service if you have never used audible.com or heard of them it's an excellent resource for audio books perhaps the best on the net and that's a strong statement but I stand by it more than 100,000 different titles um uh great books like our friend Chris Ryan sex at dawn that's on um that's available on Audible you can get that for free if you go to audible.com Joo uh if you don't use audiobooks you're a silly [ __ ] cuz they're awesome it's great if you have to travel if you get stuck in traffic if you're sitting on a bus it's it's an an amazing thing that can take an otherwise wasted moment in time and actually make it enjoyable and make make it educational and make you know enrich yourself while you're on the bus [ __ ] get it together and if you go to audible.com Joo you can get it together for free for 30 bucks or for 30 days rather 30 days for free audio service and one free audio book go try it check it out we are also brought to you by hover hover is a domain name company that's owned by the same people that own Ting and if you know how how gushy and and lovey we are to Ting you know that we feel the same way about hover uh the idea behind Ting what I what I love about it is a they're trying to give you a a great deal on excellent service and they're trying to make things as sort of as easy and ethical as as simple and fair as possible and that same sort of attitude is taken up by hover um they try to provide you with things for free that other domain name companies will make you charge for like who is domain name privacy um if you go to hover.com Rogan you will get 10% off your domain name registrations I actually have domains registered through hover um I got a bunch of them that I'll probably never use but I had an idea I can't tell you right now man I can't tell you I had a project in mine um but uh but you know what I don't I have kids and projects I
start them up and then I go J what the [ __ ] am I doing with this we silly website idea but if you wanted to uh register a webs I mean I obviously run actual web I mean I have Joe rogan.net and there's other websites but if you want to start your own hover is the way to go go check it out and uh I believe you get a free domain name registration if you sign up for more than a year right isn't it something like that yeah free domain with a year yeah it's it's an awesome company so go check it out hover.com Rogan go there save some money uh we are also bought to buy edit no we have one more right oh stamps.com yeah stamps.com which uh if you uh if you've ever seen those silly Des Squad Kitty Cat t-shirts that Brian redband creates and if you haven't seen them go to deathsquad.tv they're they're pretty badass and uh especially the hypnotic looking one the psycho psychedelic cat I love that little [ __ ] but uh Brian sends all that stuff through stamps.com um if you are uh someone who runs your own business going to the post office can be a real pain in the ass it's a long waai in line to deal with some unenthusiastic person who doesn't really want to weigh your [ __ ] and tell you how much it cost it's pain in the ass and then there's like those people waiting behind you like really you're you're bringing boxes of [ __ ] in here you can actually do all this stuff right from your desk all you have to do is you know go to stamps.com and and and check out how it works you you buy and print actual official US postage for any letter or package using your own computer and printer I mean it's an amazing thing they send you a digital scale it calculates the exact postage there's a little um microphone if you go to stamps.com there's a little microphone in the upper corner if you click on it and uh enter the promo code JRE you will get a uh $110 bonus offer which includes a digital scale and up to $55 of free postage it's an excellent service folks and again if you run a business and you don't use stamps by.com you're you're really being silly because it's it will make your life so much more simple if you have to dread those TRS to the post office I'm sure I'm sure that scale will be good for uh weighing out tobacco too how dare you how dare you in
the middle of stamps.com interview I don't think you're really talking about tobacco sir I do not believe you listen we in no way endorse selling illegal tobacco and then shipping it using stamps.com that is not what stamps.com is for okay stamp do it's for Flags if you're selling American flags if you've got maybe ammo that needs to be shipped legally state to state yes go to stamps.com but please no illegal tobacco look at it it looks like pretty badass scale right there that was all right was all right ladies and gentlemen just go there the code is JRE use it stamps.com it's [ __ ] awesome go check it out that's stamps.com at the top of the homepage enter JRE in enjoy relax repeat rinse Douglas rushkoff is here ladies and gentlemen cue the music okay do you know how to do it it's kind of got too much tobacco in it podcast check it out The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day too loud it's all right yeah I'm sorry the we have an adjustment thing here if it's too loud we can actually lower your volume where you at are you this one right here yeah is that better is that better for you yeah okay cool sorry about that didn't mean to blow your ears off um thanks for join joining us thanks for me Douglas rushkoff if you uh do not know of him is uh would you call yourself a media analyst what would you call Media theorist media theist author mainly author mainly yeah and your new book is called present shock when uh everything happens all at once is that would everything happens now and when everything happens now um I I saw uh quite a few of your videos online really uh really really interesting conversations and one of them that really struck me was um you well there was several of them that struck me but one of them was your story of being mugged and you you told people on an online room like where you got mugged and people were upset that you in telling them that you got in telling the world that you got mugged there it was lowering their property values yeah that was a was a bad one um that's so crazy yeah I mean it was one thing to get mugged which is kind of freaky in uh you know and whatever you know shame and weirdness goes with that but
um I guess what I was trying to do I mean deep down was probably elicit you know love and affection from people on my list you know so I put up oh you know and there was a a social some social responsibility to it so I put up where I got mug cuz everyone should know this is Maybe a dangerous stretch here we got to maybe get a light but um yeah so I sent I sent it out and then um the first two emails I got back from this like loving list of parents was how dare you say exactly where it happened you know we live right across the street you know you're going to lower our property values I'm like are you selling now is that is that no we're not selling but it was a really weird time when people needed their property values to go up because they were trying to get bigger mortgages and pay down and do all that um and it was just like so panicky there about that that some you know someone was afraid oh what if a newspaper covers it and it's bad and what if I it's so weird when ones and zeros Trump Humanity you know and in that case that's exactly what that is it's ones and zeros Trump Humanity well yeah and two kinds of ones and zeros you know the the ones and zeros of money yeah you know and the ones in Zer of sort of of digital technology which I think can create a kind of a distance because you're not feeling the impact of saying that to someone's face that you're yeah there's a weird communication that takes place online that's you it doesn't have any consequence you know you can you can do it anonymously and there's this it's like these barbs that you can just send out and illogically like in in in ways that you would never if you had to deal with someone one onone cuz you would feel it you would look at them you would feel the response you would be like why are you saying this like like why why being such an [ __ ] but because you are Anonymous you just so people are just like in this unnatural communication thing right but then the the the part that then worries me after that is if you get used to doing it like that in an anonymous way online does that start to make the behavior a bit more normative when you're even with your identity you know yeah oh I guarantee it has to it's it has to there's there's no free rides when it comes to that I I really feel like your
thoughts your connect like there was always a thing I remember when I was in high school this someone in my school newspaper wrote like a funny critique about the Boy Scouts and one of the things that he didn't like about the Boy Scouts was that they wanted you to keep your thoughts pure and he was like you know well my thoughts are my own thoughts you know I'm just as long as I don't do anything I don't think there's anything wrong with my thoughts right and I thought was really smartly argued I remember reading it going a while those kid's pretty clever but then I thought about I'm like but you if you're thinking about creepy [ __ ] you probably are kind of creepy you know and it's it's not going to get any better just you know you're just going to eventually one day you're going to snap and then you're going to do something creepy thing yeah if you really are like the I don't know I mean everyone has their own definition of thoughts being pure you know like a more lenient person might allow a lot of like healthy sexual things in the idea of thoughts being pure as long as it's not creepy but there's other people that would just sit around and saywell let me just think about Creepy [ __ ] all day and not do it and I'm fine but you're not there's no free ride there may be though you think so well I mean what you're describing what you're describing is you know the benefits of an absolute police state as long as it was always right yeah that's no problem right know that's the problem I mean then you can always get your a Minority Report you know just in case maybe they're wrong I'm not really subscribing to that I'm just saying that you really you can't have really shitty thoughts and get through and I think that if you're really shitty online you have those thoughts even if it's only online I really believe that negative energy genuinely shitty I mean it's just how do you decide what's what's what's shitty and what's not but yeah no it's people when they're the meaner you are online without your face the meaner you can be online with your face and the meaner you can get in real life you know until you just got mean people do you investigate people's TW like if someone says you something weird on Twitter do you go to their Twitter page and see just all
their CUNY [ __ ] that they write to everybody and go oh he just crazy guy well I will admit I focus way more on the Hunty tweets and emails and things and on the ones that are you loving and positive I'll get like 10 emails oh your book was great oh I loved it you've changed my life my children you know worship at your altar he's like delete delete delete delete delete what's wrong with you rashoff who is this guy youred why why you say that this is the biggest piece of [ __ ] I've ever read what and you a thousand people loved it more than life itself right but I'll spend the rest of my week trying to convince this one guy oh no you don't I'm not bad guy why the book is actually oh you got to learn the internet yeah well now it's that's new well it's it's hard it's hard not to engage people because they're they're it's like a person saying it to you it's it's very similar and to someone who's public you know you're out there you have your your name is out there the videos are out there anyone can find out about you and see you they can reach you too and reaching you on Twitter you know they can send you some shitty thing just to get a a rise from you and then they're just making you dance then you're dancing dancing to someone else's spell so you got to learn how to just look at yourself and go make sense no but what it actually oh yeah and be able to leave it but you got to be able to do that to the point where where it's healthy and not be on because at some point if everybody's going Rush cough wake up your book needs to be this when it's you know you've got you can do this but you can't do that I well on the end of the sale the the market would tell me I guess yeah the market would tell you but you're you're not a dumb guy you would never do that you would never make a book like that that was so off and out of line you would look at yourself along the way I can tell I'm talking to you for 10 minutes you're not that kind of guy that the kind of guy that would do that is like there's there's certain people that are functional crazy and they can like figure some things out and chase some things down and then they'll get stuck in some sort of a weird rut and you can't talk him out of it and you know you realize oh he was crazy all the time
he just figured out how to get through through life you know those are the ones that will go off on crazy tangents and people go what are you doing cuz the guy wasn't really nuts in the first place you're not nuts you're all right man you don't have to worry about that [ __ ] get that you need to keep a posy people around you to keep telling you you're not insane then you can you got a I think there's a good thing that comes from criticism though because the it's even really harsh criticism is because if they're ridiculous and if you look at what they're saying if it's if it's ridiculous and mean and it really reveals far more about them than it really does about you but look at what they're saying and is there any Merit to it at all does it make any sense or is it just nonsense is it just a guy being an [ __ ] or if you weren't you could you find Merit in it like I've found criticism from the biggest [ __ ] but it was like there was like a hair of accuracy into it that made me like reconsider certain things yeah I mean and the most valuable thing about it for me entertaining it to some extent is just it makes me it makes me more flexible you know as a as a thinker you know if you can wrap your head around you know oh where am I wrong right it can make you a little indecisive cuz it's like well he's right and he's also right this one right well sometimes things are complicated it I know but that's the whole that's you know for me the object of the game that's why I keep writing I'm writing about the now you know present being present if you're actually present you have to be present with yourself and you have to be present who you're with right you know and that's the thing that everybody looks to be avoiding one way or another you know whether whether they're doing it oh because I got to earn money or they're doing it because they got to check a device I mean there's the constant ssing and it's just I see so few people I walk into rooms now and I feel like you know I don't feel like I'm in a room with these people there's no sort of social cohesion they're not really present they're each in their own little segment you know interconnected with the internet yeah and then not connected with with each other you know I I am you know I'm a net fan I've been since late
80s I've been you know Pro you know boing boinger cyber Punk type person but you know I keep feeling like rather than using these things to to reach out to other people and connect you know we're using these things for business they've gotten super aggressive behaviors gotten way worse and I don't even think it's our fault I honestly think it's in in these cases it's because we're living on this this uh uh an operating system an economic operating system that just needs to feed off the net when it's should be our space not the economy space yeah it's I I feel like we're in a a stage of progression for this interconnectivity progression where we're starting off with you know we were starting off with just regular telephones and that has moved to cellular phones which everybody carries which is going to move into some Google Glasses type thing which is going to eventually I mean down the line if you extrapolate a 100 years or whatever ever it's going to take there's going to be some really crazy interconnectivity that people share and I think this stage that we're going through right now the anonimous stage of being able to like make a Twitter account on some fake name and just start saying mean things to random people like that ability is going to go away you're not going to have this Anonymous portal like I I just think if you look at the way things I feel like the way I look at the future is like this thing that's going to be really scarce is secrets I think we're going to be able to connect with each other in some way that we probably can't even imagine right now whether it's some neurochip or something that you embed into your body whether it's nanotechnology whatever it is there's going to come a day where we're like completely interconnected with each other but the the the beauty of that though is if it really worked it would bring us back to the now that we've been avoiding all this time to the face Toof face live interaction where you can't [ __ ] with each other other because you're here you know there's this guy strange way to look at it met this I met this guy this show guy um you know a stage magician guy who could tell when people are lying I don't know if you ever seen this guy he's like worked for the FBI and stuff and he can like he
does all these tricks he lines up 10 people and he says okay one of you think and he he can really tell period when people are lying and I was thinking if he can tell that people are lying because he's got this Talent it means that on some level we all know we all have that ability right so we all on some level know when the other one's lying to us so it's it's kind of been if you're actually in the moment it's all exposed anyway yeah I think there's a weird feeling that you get when someone's being deceptive there's a weird feeling you get where you're like there's you sense a disturbance when you're communicating with them this but you can't put it in a tangible there's nothing you could say oh it was x amount of weight so here I know this is a real thing you know here I put it on a scale it's but there's some weird thing that happens when you when you're with some like you can tell if someone's upset at you and not saying it they can be saying all the right words but you like there's a certain there's a a coldness or a lack of warmth or there's a little something I wrote about those women in uh uh what's it called the uh Housewives of Orange County they really I got obsessed with them because they were just having all of these awful disagreements all the time and I'm Communications guy I'm trying to figure out what why is there communication breaking down and right so this is what I do so I know so I I concluded in the end that it's because they've put so much Botox in their faces that they can't actually execute facial expressions in an honest way anymore in a way that the other person organically can react oh my God so these women in trying to kind of freeze time at age 29 ended up making themselves inaccessible to the now that they're in WoW cuz you know you see one they say oh you know my you know my daughter I think she might have cancer and the other one's like oh I'm so sorry but she's Frozen in a smile right so then they go to the first one and she say I can't believe I told her my daughter you know has cancer and the other one she say she's sorry but I can tell she's not you know and that's sort of I mean that's it's just a metaphor but uh but it's true they're like stuffing cotton in their mouth and they can't you can't understand what they're
saying like they're they're ruining the facial communication the expressions of facial communication right what a weird world we live in where they're shooting poison in their face to freeze it right but they're to freeze it in time is they're trying to stop time and it's like it's I understand the urge to stop time but when you stop time you lose the moment that's kind of the whole point I'm making it's like the net it can stop time in a certain way but you're going to lose certain moments then you know so I'm I'm all for being on the net and having a net moment but you know even here you know I've heard you do those ads before for those sponsors and you could just cut and paste you know you could cycle seven of them and maybe people wouldn't even know it's the same ones you know you could cut and Pace from another show and throw it in but you decide no I'm actually going to sit here and read these three ads with my friends well if I didn't do it like that I'd be really bored you know I I I I would never want to just read and AD so I we always do it way you make more money you make more you know that's the IND the model of the Industrial Age of course is to make print out more yeah and the only way we would the only way we could even do any of this stuff the way we're doing it it's because we don't have anybody that we have to approve with you know no one I don't have to go to NBC and say hey this is what we're thinking to doing I know you have these commercials but we're just going to talk [ __ ] and occasionally we'll get to the point of the commercial but but ironically on the long run it ends up making more money I mean certainly more money for the people who are actually doing it you know maybe by the other system you can make more total money but it's going to go to you know God knows what to some institution anyway you so so the fact that it is that it is live and it is a what an MP3 mainly it is mainly a podcast you know you think on the first hand cuz I'm looking to do make a kind of radio Choice myself and it's like well I can do this for the man and make this amount of money kind of guaranteed but I'm going to have to stay between these sight lines and or I can go this other route and actually do the thing I do you know yeah there's not
even a choice there yeah not in this day and age it's not necessarily it's they used to be a time where you you would have to choose you would well this internet thing who knows if it's going to work out but that's crazy like you you have an option to immediately jump in and get a gigantic group of people that are going to start retweeting and tweeting and listening to your stuff and you'll you'll develop a giant following in no time and as that's happening all you're doing is you're you know selling ads for companies that you actually believe in you you could that's the only way you should do it [ __ ] working for some company that tells you not to swear or not to do this or not to discuss that or you know that's not the stance we're taking on this particular complicated issue you know [ __ ] that it's just that's the enemy of real thought the enemy of real thought is committee you know I don't know what you're really thinking if everything you say has to go through a committee before it comes out of your mouth I want to know what the [ __ ] you're thinking and and especially in in like the sense of a radio show you know a guy on the radio that's like the whole thing it used to be like even DJs it used to be this DJ likes this music so this is why it's awesome or was broadcasting from the same city that you were in remember when uh the then Clear Channel took over and it was like oh my gosh so we're getting a recording that's done by computer 3,000 miles away this is my local rock and roll station have those Jack FMS which is essentially like playing Shuffle when you're on your iPod there you know could be anything of a number of uh things that they approve and they Pretend We're wacky we just don't have any rules like oh we're Jack FM and it's like a standard model there's like aund Jacks across the country and probably even more than that it's weird I think radio's completely on its way out I think they're [ __ ] I think that's like a it's a silly way to do it and no one's going to stick with it after a while like why you're going to have internet access in your car within no time that's a that's easy they could do that right now I already get that with podcast on the iPhone cuz I have my iPhone Bluetooth to my car so I'll just immediately say oh I'd like to listen to
a Duncan trussle podcast and in I've done it at a red light where it's so easy at a red light it's one two Duncan boom there he is so the one aspect of radio that I feel like I would miss is that local terrestrial quality of it because I mean yeah we could still have I you could you know you could have a a la Channel and I could have a you know this part of New York Channel and you know we could do that technically with with digital you know where you'd pick your your so-called regional thing it'll be local stuff but the medium is not biased towards that the medium is it's all equivalent you know and I wonder would we drift further away from from local and kind of the things that matter to us in the here and now or um you know or would we choose that stuff I think you know instead of like a local radio station you're going to have a million people in La Mak their own music making their own putting their own [ __ ] out there that you can choose from you know whether it's a music list like a Pandora list or something like that someone puts together or whether it's podcasting I just think the idea of a local representative was always gross you know it was always gross Wolfman Jack was always gross because for every Wolfman Jack there was a million other dudes that probably had interesting ideas as well and they had no Outlet so you have one guy has this outlet from this particular time that's crazy that that idea sucks the the idea that we're dealing with now is way better it's like a a billion Outlets six billion outlets and and there's no local anymore there's people that are in that town that'll tell you about things but everyone's more connected than ever before right and because they are I mean the economy as we know it also has to go away too right you know there once you have six billion people doing podcasts I mean and you got two billion left doing farming it's like where did all the businesses go and you also lose lose those iconic figures Like the Wolf manjack or like Howard Stern or like the M well I mean I think you could still choose you would just have major every once in a while something major would happen right but it wasn't weren be wouldn't be that one guy who's your Town's guy you know like
when I I grew up in Boston it was Charles lacera Charles lacera and the the big mattress was like this he would call this like morning show was called the big mattress he was a great guy Ladera really nice guy I met him too eventually but he um he his he was like the number one radio DJ in Boston everybody knew it you would go to when I was doing construction I go to job sites people would turn on turn on the big mattress listen to lock with era and like it was that was a show it was like that was the show and the only way to get a show like that is to not have a lot of options you know to to have a show that everybody agrees we're all going to listen to you know it's got be only like three options you know disco no we're not listening to disco you know you know there wasn't like the internet quality options that that that that changes the whole game like there's never going to be a CBS Radio on the internet no it does it it does it will and it's going to replace everything terrestrial I mean on that sense so if you're saying what we're saying everything's going to be replaced everything terrestrial is going to be replaced first it's radio then it's other stuff all we have to make sure then is before we lose all those things which we're going to inevitably lose to say to ourselves what is what is it we value about those things that we want to bring into these digital things before we're untethered in there you know before it's all the way yeah what we want is our cake and we want to eat it too we want the digital era and we still want mom and pop stores you know we're trying to like keep it all together ex and that's the question is can you get both you know so can you have this you know very traditional narrative 20th century Industrial Age culture live right aside you know this sort of steady state economy and peer-to-peer currencies and local csas you know can we have an iPhone and organic chard and no and no slavery in Africa to get either yeah is that possible I'm hoping so I we move towards it or not you know it seems like that's what a great percentage of the world would like but it's we've made shockingly little progress in moving towards that potential Utopia right but
then but you know if as long as we got a hope or you know try to Envision I would say okay but but the shift that we're undergoing now from an analog era to a digital one is a bigger shift than just than just that there's a whole different digital media environment that we've gone into so we've gone into this from this this time is money expansionist economy live by the clock Universe to one that's potentially asynchronous that's just off that off that thing I remember when the net first came up it was like it was you know people in Austin and Slackers and cyber punks the idea was that the net was going to give us more slack right you know and it ended up for most people kind of doing the opposite because they're always on and working and being monitored and all that and distracted but I mean I think if we if we uh uh take command of the way we're programming these things then we can use them to sort of to create you know the gorgeous culture of slack to create you know what a few of us are are kind of discovering we can do like you're doing with this right you're just doing your thing yeah I think we're trying to resist the inevitable and that inevitable is a symbiotic computer relationship there's going to be some sort of biomechanical connection says one man talking through through a microphone to another man with headphones to a million people listening in their car or wherever the [ __ ] they are synchronously right I I really don't feel like we can stop that it seems like the things that we got so excited by as as these higher functioning primates are these new things that we've created that input us or give us input in a way that our body's completely not designed to to get like through your earphones like like listening to a podcast like the a computer itself the the ability to watch a video the ability to go to the movies it's all this is the stimuli that's coming at us is just we're not designed for but it's it's reconfiguring itself to be as seductive as possible right because it's not it's that's what it's for right it's to seduce us into itself so that the companies behind it can make money and because it we move constantly in to in a path of of progression and if you look at the technology it's always going to move into a stronger great we were
never satisfied with any particular result at any particular time we want more choices yeah we want more choices we want it to be powerful more fast we want we want better graphics we want bigger booms that's not realistic enough let's take it to the next level it's it's in this desire to get these experiences we're pushing the technology like ultimately that's what's getting but then what's interesting to me about that is while all that's pushing ahead what we get in a digital media environment is we end up retrieving like weird medieval values you know you get Burning Man and Etsy and people doing peer-to-peer stuff trying to have their local currencies which they haven't had since Medieval Times you know you see the the stuff that gets retrieved and paganism and and uh uh you know mashing up uh roots to heal yourself of things maker culture all these things are what we've lost over the last thousand years that's what the Renaissance in the Industrial Age was about you know stamping that out and putting everybody on the on the assembly line at Ford so it's fun that as we move forward we get these great old recurrences which to me is reassuring means that we are bringing something with us into into this next place I think it's also that the current system is so flawed that people are willing to try anything and that they're actually actively thinking about what can we do differently can we make a Lo local currency like right yeah know which is interesting it's like the two places I've gotten emails from in the last many years of of people doing social currencies are either from a place like IA New York where they're doing it because they're just you know strange and trying to try something weird and good or like laning Michigan where there's no GM plant there's no bank that's going to give money to a factory to open up to hire people and they're desperate they're like well I've got skills I know how to fix refrigerator and they have needs so can't we just make an economy that way you know those are the places where people are actually asking the the the the where they're ready I just don't like that Readiness seems to involve being just so not just fed up but uncomfortable you know that you've got to do
something yeah we're we're clearly going through change we we're clearly going through a change as a culture that we weren't prepared for and we're sort of making our way as we go along and there's there's a lot of mistakes along the way and the evidence that points to it one of the best pieces is your story about people getting upset at you because you got mugged and called in the story you know and said the location that's one of the best examples of people like losing the script like like along the way in this crazy thing that we're doing where we develop currency and and then there's things called property values and there's mortgages and equity and all this crazy [ __ ] along the way you know we're going to have to figure out how to how to stay human and when you see like instant failure like oh my God I got mugged you [ __ ] [ __ ] what do you why'd you say the place uh yeah it's interesting I mean it's in every single one of my books and I've written like 12 now you know they're they're all finally about how do we bring Humanity into this thing that seems to have lost it so I did it for you know for for business I did it for for the economy with life Inc is the book you're talking about I did it for Judaism with something called Nothing sacred saying Judaism should be this ongoing conversation keep it alive keep it human don't let it lock down and now this one it's weird because it's like I'm kind of admitting that it's what I I guess I'm realized it myself but I'm kind of saying oh my gosh I'm a humanist you know I'm a humanist and a technology Enthusiast and how do you be both cuz so many of the other folks who are sort of pro technology sort of my posy they're all sort of talking about not human beings being enabled by technology but technology surpassing us you know some Singularity or you know some some moment in the future where computers get smarter than us and then we're not really needed anymore it might not be that simple I'm I've been thinking about it a lot lately and one of the things I think is why do we have this idea of competition and why would the computer enjoy that idea with us our idea is based entirely on our biological makeup our need to reproduce our need to prove ourselves to our mate our need to protect against strangers all these
instincts that a computer's not going to have at all so the idea of competition with humans for resources or even the idea that survival is imperative and that you know you you you have an ego and you can't die they're not going to have any that so why would they be in competition with us why wouldn't it just be a new it wouldn't be because of them it' be because of the way we program them you know become sentient though that that's really then they wouldn't do the bad thing Cu uh why not keep us around but it doesn't matter I don't even it's not it's not a matter of them being able to do that because I don't even think they will I don't think they can it's more a matter of people in the here and now saying that human beings are really only important in so far as we can be the Shepherds and organizers of information right information is the thing that's evolving towards greater states of complexity and once human beings are no longer the best at making complex information but computers are the best at it then there's just no need for humans anymore would the computers kill us or not I don't know would they give us a good time who knows but but the just the whole idea that we should be developing technology with this in mind um I don't know it it negates what I think is an essential for us anyway centrality of humanity in the equation well I think people don't recognize how much we need each other we don't recognize how important positive interaction is with other people to your health and the way you feel about life there's clearly a relationship that people have to each other that we're in denial about we lock ourselves up in our apartments or in our homes and we shut our car doors and we roll down the window and that's one reasons why people are willing to give people the finger when they're in the car you would never do that in real life you feel like you're in some sort of a contained world and even though you're not even Anonymous you're still like [ __ ] you you know how many people do you give the finger in real life like nobody but once a year I'll give somebody the finger somebody does something crazy and they beep at me [ __ ] you [ __ ] you it's beautiful it's a beautiful thing to do but you know that eventually I think we have to accept the fact that we we we
are only happy when the people around us are happy when we're in harmony with the people around us we're not happy when we're in Conflict we're not happy when when we're not happy when we [ __ ] people over like I know people that have done bad things in business and bad things ethically and bad you know and they're not happy people no but then in the current culture they can compensate for that with medicine oh there you go anpress that gets them through the night what you have to hope I mean I always do which is a it's a vain hope I hope that the people who do bad stuff but then make up for it with drugs still feel worse than I do you know not not taking those drugs and and trying to do good stuff you don't want to believe that you know these kind of guys like I used to see um I won't even say his name one of those millionaires down at Nicks games and I'd always think I sure hope he's not happy you know that's funny which isn't very fair but uh well all he's doing is playing some really crazy game that was around before he was ever born he just got into it and got really good at it the the game itself is bananas just the stock market itself just the idea that the wealth of of of a person can vary day by day because of confidence you know confidence computer consumer confidence in a product can like shift and change with recall and then you watching these numbers go up and down like what the [ __ ] are you even talking about most of the explanations you see you know I watch these business sites and they Market will go down and they say oh mark it down because of such and such in London and then it's like by the time that piece comes out that Market's actually back up and they're already constructing their you know let's tie Market going back up to another random feature you know it's like the the the explanations after the fact have so little to do you know with whatever some algorithm decided it was going to suddenly Ultra fast trade something and and throw the stock up you know it's like at this point it's it truly is that's the best place to see humans combating machines is on the market where it's like there's human Traders competing with these uh programmed algorithms and the algorithms are certain winning the war and if you look
at their screens while they're while they're doing it it is almost like code like the average person who doesn't understand it doesn't know what the [ __ ] the stock market's saying the symbols and the Sao and this and that the ones and the zeros you look at all that you have no idea what that is I mean how is that really different than a computer code that you're reading I mean that's essentially like a a way that uh people are are are are tapping into this bizarre system I mean it was at one time the sort of the price of something had to do with thing it's like there's a factory oh if the factory went slower today in the Rain the market will go down on that side it was like real you know and I feel like it's gotten certainly further and further from whatever is going on in that company or the earnings or the things you know it's it's absolutely abstracted to the point now where people don't even invest in companies right right you invest in something like when Facebook went public people bought it at like 9: in the morning at like 9:10 they're all pissed off that it hasn't gone up it's like wait a minute I was supposed to you know I thought Tri triple my wealth it's like no you don't you don't make money on the trade you're supposed to make money on when you've when you've done it but you know now we've got you know derivatives and derivatives of derivatives and derivatives of derivatives of derivatives on there which is just a way of kind of shrinking the explain that for people don't know what that means so if you buy a stock I mean you know you buy a stock and you hope it goes up and then you sell it in the future if you'd rather make up that time right now I can sell it in the future right now right I can basically sell that future sale cuz I think that sale is going to be a good one now right I can say what if I did that trade I'm going to I'm gonna I'm going to have it now but so what am I trading then I'm trading I'm trading on on an abstraction from what something's going to be worth at some moment in the future so it's like I'm trading on the stock over time and then someone else going to say well I'm going to trade on the abstraction of that I'm going to trade on whether or not people think the stock in the future is going to be worth more next minute
than this minute it's like well what's that so basically what you're doing is you're buying the stock over time over time over time over time you're creating these things these derivatives of whatever the original investment was which is kind of just a derivative of the thing right there's the pork belly there's the derivative of the pork belly derivatives of the derivatives derivatives of the derivatives of the derivatives of the derivatives all all ever tighter ways of saying what is pork belly going to be worth you know on February 3rd why is that legal well it's legal because what it because the economy requires it right we have a kind of money right that has a clock in it it's lent into existence and has to be paid back more than got lent out so our economy needs to expand by hook or by crook somehow it has to grow in order for it to survive that's just the way Central currency Works they need to find more surface area for the money more ways for people to buy stuff so instead of just having there's not enough of a company to buy so now we can bet on how that company's going to do in some future now we can bet on that or we can bet on that right but what we're really doing is trying to kind of compress all of this time right onto like the head of a pin so we can bet on that so I don't have to sit and wait you know 3,000 years for Facebook to be worth something I can trade on its future worth now but the whole joke of that is people who are trading that way they're these computers that are trading faster than them so I put in one of my super fast crazy you know um derivative trade Goldman Sachs sees that order coming in on the computer they're so close to The Exchange they can execute an order before my order even goes through based on having seen that I was going to do what I'm going to do so they can literally trade in my future right I am in their past now that's that's digital time shifting that's that sounds like they're cheating that's like someone like running a quake server and they're local and then you have like 150 ping exactly that's [ __ ] I think so with the [ __ ] the irony of it is it's gotten so big right durative trading is bigger than regular trading now so that the New York
Stock Exchange actually just got bought the exchange itself got bought by its derivative exchange oh so it's almost just like the proofs in the pudding it's like the derivative owns the market at this point but that's when you get how anybody allow that how how could the government even ever deny how incompetent they are when they allowed that like that alone to like someone should just like have a broadcast on National Television a you know one of those Town Hall sort of events where you sit down with the the main people that run the country and go how the [ __ ] are you allowing this how how if you not fix this why would you ever try to do anything else before you fix this when they made the decision they genuinely thought it would be good for business but it doesn't at least in the short term I I will never understand where it all go the business people promised them they figure it out before it got really bad oh my God we figur it out before it got really bad how much bigger is the derivative economy I don't know exactly I mean it seemed I was looking trying to find out what the what the sort of trading was it seemed from what I could tell like that 94% of Trades are now derivative because they're [ __ ] is that because there's such bigger volumes that trade oh my God that's insane no one's like you're not going to buy you know 10,000 shares of honey well today cuz that's you know you know whatever $60,000 or something but you could buy like 10,000 Futures on honey well cuz they're they're really cheap my God that is so crazy 94% of the St of Trades are and scared and how many more I think it's Ultra fast too is a whole other they're sort of two different two different Realms but yeah it's huge they must all be crazy everyone involved in that must know that they're bringing on The Matrix they must know that they they're they're the first steps before the digital machine takes over they must know they must know that there's no Humanity in that stock market [ __ ] that's chaos well the thing is and and again I don't want digital technology to get blamed for this right because the real operating system they're promoting is not the digital operating system it's the economic operating system underneath it it's this
13th century Central currency interest bearing debt-based economy and none of the guys who I thought would get us out you know EV Williams with Twitter Mark Zuckerberg with Facebook the kids from Google right they're G they each of them had a real shot even Bill Gates at breaking the central economy and and flipping things the other way not going not going public not be not doing it with Venture Capital saying if I can if if Google can hack web search if Facebook can hack social if Twitter can hack everybody why can't they you know if they're so busy disintermediating all these different things why doesn't any one of them yet want to disintermediate Central Banking and say no Mr Chase we don't actually need you we're going to do our whole thing through Kickstarter say like one of your didn't one of your things uh yeah yeah that's an interesting point of view I think they probably would never want to take that stand because they would be killed I would imagine there's a lot of money in uh in in them not being suc sucessful with that Quest you know to Ure that they is there a point at which you know you're doing PayPal okay we're going to let people do individual transactions that was their their original model and they were going to make money on the float and uh then the banks came to them and said oh you're not allowed to do that you're not a bank PayPal kids you got to be you know registered as a bank or you're going to have to be connected to one of us and that's when you know PayPal kind of becomes part of eBay rather than whatever these crazy guys might have done and I I suppose there's this point you know where you know innocently these companies they get bigger and bigger and bigger hoping to do the right things and then it's like we're going to we're not going to let you do this if you don't if you don't play by our rules but uh I also feel like there's companies that if you if you're willing to go smaller if you're willing to let it grow a little bit slower that you can scale up you can become a big ethical Corporation yeah yeah I always always wondered why a big Corporation couldn't be ethical why why can't you have a big Corporation with a a good ideology behind it that you but I
think it's really because the shareholders right because and shareholders are impatient shareholders are there they're not really there right they're distant the shareholders are are people who just want to see a number go up by the next quarter and if you have to make a number go up by the next quarter then you're going to have to be thinking about something other than doing good in the world yeah uh you if it is ones and at all costs yeah yeah if that's the game you're playing and but if you've got shareholders then you're going to throw you in jail if you don't do that I mean that's your fiduciary responsibility and it's a fascinating thing that a corporation can do something that an individual would be a total piece of [ __ ] to do if it was one person that was involved and this one guy what he did was he you know he gave the loans to the third world company the countries that they couldn't pay back he went over there monopolized their natural resources himself dug the oil line himself polluted the river himself you know raped and killed the villagers himself he'd be like Jesus Christ lock that [ __ ] guy in jail he's making people work for $5 a week you know that guy there he is there he is hold him down you know but because it's a corporation you're like well they're making money for their exactly and how many people who on the one hand you know will read you know good magazine or something or listen to us and and NPR and and be all sad about that stuff still has a 401k plan with stocks in the very companies that are doing those things so who are they they're the ones who actually own the company they're the shareholder who wants this thing to go up so they can send their kid to college you know I mean it's it's it's interesting how circular it gets so I mean for for how unver virtuous that circle is though I think unwinding it is just is just as easy so it's like okay instead of doing these sort of long distance long-term disconnected Investments and mining companies I'm going to invest my money in where I see it and people I actually know in the place where I am who are trying to do something you know and bring it bring it if not uh if not local at least um at least into your present at least into your into your visible reality yeah and
it really is the the the pursuit of the end goal of Simply only ones and zeros done through a corporate way is really antihuman I mean that's the that's the real anti-human aspect of it is that it will engage human suffering as long as it's willing to extract ones and zeros from that like calculates how much human suffering are we willing to cause how much Devastation to the environment are we willing to cause how much you know which is why then the question becomes I mean in The Nightmare scenario then is you invest that into technology so that your robots no they're not in competition with us but they are playing the corporate program they have no desire other than to extract extract value and meaning from us and those computers running algorithms recognize BS in the marketplace before a human could ever see it coming and then counter counter and meanwhile as we're making ourselves Dumber about technology right we're in this code academy t-shirt right I want people to learn to code as we become more stupid about our computers our computers are getting smarter about us right they're doing big data repositories of every every keystroke right every you know are there they know you know they know stuff about us they knew some teenage girl was pregnant before family did and you know they know when kids are going to be gay before they know themselves you know it's like think that they're they're they're SC really smart not how about the weirdness that comes when you go to a Google uh when you Google something or you look for things certain things online and then say you go to a YouTube and there's ads for things that you've recently looked at that is scary tantalizing ads oh I see you're into Jeeps why we have a Jeep for sale and it's a new Jeep and here's a video you can click on and they're AB testing that you know they're saying is which did he react to last time girlin Jeep or not Girling Jeep Girling Jeep okay give him that next time give him tits this guy needs to see tits like they'll show you everything that you're into you're like you son of a [ __ ] how do you know about all this it's weird and it's just a beginning we're accepting it slowly accepting the needle into our vein that pumps in Nano cells that eventually replace human
tissue there's going to be a commercial there's going to be an artificial guy he's going to be saying why would you want to be natural you're going to rot it's not fun life gets even better you'll buy your little Nanobots too from like the most reputable company you know the one that you really like and a great user agreement and then but then after it's in you it's like they get bought by Google and all of a sudden your user agreement shifted it's like you know agree to you know um um do you want to have you know uh do you want to remember your your children's names you know okay then sign this us this new user agreement right right otherwise you get no no data you have enough for two people two phone numbers your emergency you're 911 emergenc just like your phone like your phone if it's not registered it only lets you call 911 that'll be the same thing well you should have paid your bill Mr rushkoff I don't know why you didn't want to pay your bill now here you are with no recourse yeah you're going to look at a shiny guy from the future he's a thousand years old and he looks great he's going to be all artificial yeah but again it's not it's not with all that artificialness it's not necessarily although it maybe is it's not necessarily the technology that's the problem in this equation you know it's the company that owns the technology right but ultimately what's getting done the technolog is getting pushed that seems to be the case in every single situation and ultimately at the top of the execution food chain where you look at like what is being done at the end level that's really the game changer the technology constantly increases and with every you know overtake with every you know new gigantic invention and and bundles of money that go along with it and all the people that got [ __ ] over at the end of the day the technology keeps moving forward and it keeps getting stronger and stronger and stronger it does but it's not just stronger though it's it's it's fundamentally different I mean that's the thing that mclan was trying to bring up you Marshall mclan the media theorist he was looking at at the different environments that different media different kinds of Technology create so you know fire had a change the
had a media environment had a technological environment with fire now you know uh people could then go live further North and colder places and little Apes you know who were smart enough to have fire could get away from big dumb Apes who you know couldn't travel North to chase them you know we got different races all sorts of things happen because of something like Fire or the invention of text right the invention of text changed well for me it changed the way we look at time right because now I can write something now that I'm going to be accountable for later so we can have contracts with text we got history we got the judeo-christian line of thought we got law ethics you know we got uh uh our we got the calendar you know then you know that all went along and we developed then we got the printing press and we get the clock right now the clock all of a sudden we go oh wow now we can actually break down the day into these little pieces we put one up at the Town Square and that's when time became money that's when it's like okay now you can work for an hour for me instead of making a thing that you're connected to and selling it to me now you can work for the hour or two hours or three hours we got a standard and now we get the digital media environment you know which is just as different as the Industrial Age media environment that the clock was from the printing press from the from written text from from uh from even fire you know and in the digital media environment there's this uh it's not just more Tech it's it's more it's more of a sense of of moving through time in a choice to choice to choice to Choice way you know where we just have more choices than we know what to do with we spend more time processing Choice itself than we do get the things that we've chosen you know it's it's like the the call waiting is almost like the typical kind of digital Choice it just enters all I'm talking to this loved one I've got a call waiting what do I do you know just to be put in that just to be put yourself in that in that interruptive state is very digital because you you want to have the choice because that person wants to reach you but how you know how that interrupts what uh what used to be a more continuous way of of just of moving through life
yeah it it certainly gives us more options than we're naturally designed to handle and the the more people have on their Facebook page the more likely they really they have zero connection to those people the the idea I mean like like we're we're designed for dunbar's number right 150 people yeah and you get you get 5,000 people on your Facebook page who the [ __ ] what does that mean who are talk well then then you're marketing you know basically what what kind of interaction are you really having you know well it's not the same it's not a a human- to human interaction the other weird thing about Facebook for me again is how it compresses time so it's like there are these people from like second and third grade I'm finally you know 45 whatever years away from that and then it's like you know two weeks ago hi I'm Marcy from second grade it's like oh my God I'd finally I'd left that behind me it's not Marcy I don't know who she is it's who I was or who she relates to it's just it was in the past for a reason right you know and now it's here but then on the front end I've got the computer on the other side calculating everything about my keystroke so they know my future right they know they know who's gonna be pregnant who's gonna be gay who's going to be this going to be that so it's like okay so it was like my past is all in here and now my future's all in here and everything's just sort of crushed in on me there I don't feel um I don't feel autonomous anymore I don't feel like I have agency I don't feel um in charge I can't get away from anything and I can't actually be moving towards anything with a sense of free will but can't you though I mean you're you're sort of in control and of how much you interact with it how much you choose to use it you did that's why I I dropped Facebook you dropped it yeah I was just like too much yeah but you still use Twitter yeah what Twitter stays there why is Facebook problematic Facebook is a problem that well real problem with Facebook is I'm not in charge of what I do on Facebook why is that right because Mark Zuckerberg can use me or my likeness in an ad of something that I don't even know what it is he can't do that anymore though I thought oh really he undid that yeah I think that was something that wasn't
supposed to happen supposedly or they backtracked about that H they do they go two steps forward one step back two step forward one step back it's sort of an Ever evolving user agreement I mean where the part that I had gotten concerned about was you know I'm on there as an author right I'm on there buy my book love me you know and like my ideas um I can't do that I can't solicit the likes of other people of readers of people who I'm supposedly uh uh advising about this stuff uh especially about sort of media ethics and integrity I can't invite them to like my page when that very Act of liking is making them vulnerable to marketing that's going to be passing through me Beyond My Control yes and no because they're also providing you with this excellent connection with all these people that's available through Facebook which not as limited as Twitter with 140 characters to pay for the privilege to reach those people but I'm not willing to have them and their likenesses used to represent things I don't think that they understand that what liking makes someone vulnerable to you know I don't feel so I mean on some sense this is patronizing I guess what I'm saying is I think I know stuff about this technology that they don't if they all knew really how this worked if they all knew the implications of what they were doing then I would say let's let's go go for it but ultimately the worst consequences is what marketing they're going to be marketed to they're going to be represented so their image would then be put on something oh so if but no I'm pretty sure they I'm 100% sure they dropped that right didn't they drop that thing of using their photos and advertising you're not they're not allowed to just take your photos and just uh just go your photos no they're not going to do it with your photos that you're talking about pter or you're talking about the the the photo the photo thing they bought I'm talking about us but for you were saying like using it for sponsored stories and how they use people in a sponsored story at least the day that I quit at that point it was nothing oh you could turn that off but yeah that that there's things like that that are on but there's ways to turn them off I'm confused what is a
sponsored story you mean see people don't know I feel like most people don't know and just to be there it just didn't seem like and it also because I so don't trust who they are and what they're what they're about I don't trust them as a company the way I want to trust the kinds of companies I let get bigger and bigger and deeper and deeper into my lives and eventually put probes in my brain do you not trust him because Justin Timberlake played him in a movie is that part he played the other one no he played uh Sean uh um he played the good guy no he played just what's the Myspace story and how much of it is about Coke and [ __ ] right is that is that what happened with those guys they just take that money go crazy but if you're if you're going to if you're going to take Facebook if you're going to say you I don't trust Facebook you can't trust Twitter you can't trust Google you can't trust any of the stuff you use now but I'm aware right now I'm aware of the ways that Twitter is broadcast I feel in control of how I'm tweeted and retweeted I twiter is almost worse though because they're actually to the point where you try to go back in time in your timeline you can there there there gets a cut off point where you can't download your own tweets unless you know the exact link of that they end didn't they end up giving you your history uh they said but I still can't do it on mine and then that's the same with like twit pics or all these photo ones like some of them so now you're saying that so B is okay you're saying that you want your if you're going to do tweets you want in addition for your free for your free tweeting you want them to maintain an archive of you and everyone else forever well I'm I I personally I I personally don't have a a problem with it but when I'm saying is that's kind of more ridiculous to me than Facebook the fact that I can't even access stuff that I've that I've I mean you can save it or whatever the thing I'm concerned about I mean this is what in the book I call it digia you know I feel like the problem with with digital for most people is not this idea of information overload that there's too much stuff coming at them but they're they can't maintain more than one online Persona uh simultaneously that there's too many sort of individual instances of
us and if you're going to have different instances of yourself you know even your email inbox is some is an instance of A Sort if you're going to have all these different different things out there filling up interacting you want to be damn well sure that you're in charge of each one of them M you know and I don't feel I felt like Facebook was now doing things on my behalf I was like one step of control well you make a very good point in that having more then one version of yourself becomes very problematic especially if you're involved in any like real I mean I'm sure you probably interact with quite a few people every day and to do that on Twitter is semi- manageable do it to do it when you can but to do that on Twitter and then have to hop over to Facebook too it's like you should have one portal you know one portal at least one that's one that it was always sad you know because I don't really I didn't go to Facebook much and I go there and they' be like some relative you know who said oh I just heard of your mom's passing it's like six months have gone by before I found that message you know want to consult them or whatever um it's it's just such a it's for me it was such an awful interface anyway that I was just losing losing stuff there but yeah it's a I don't think it just has to do with oh well I get more uh uh correspondence from other people so I've got to I've got to limit it more than others I think it really has to do with um well if anything it's at least I'm the canary in the cage for what's coming for everybody else I mean you know people only used to get one or two emails and now it's just streaming in for everybody yeah if you send me something on Facebook I don't read it it's so I just to let everybody know cuz they pile up I I don't have time to read them so I'm with you in a certain way still use Facebook to put up links but it's connected to my Twitter and I'm pretty cognizant of that so when I put a tweet up on when I put a link up on Facebook I make sure it's short enough to fit into a tweet yeah with with a link but at least with with Twitter I mean you you understand what you're putting out you put out this little 140 things it went to your people and those words are out there it's like
with with a a tool like Facebook um you don't really have the same sense of of ownership over what's going and you don't have you don't actually have it right your picture is used Douglas went into Starbucks just now yeah I could turn it off so everyone should turn it off you know so right so again you know it's like I feel like it's it's a useful it's a useful tool but it's it's a it's just part of the untrustworthiness of a a good portion of the net yeah well I could see that with someone else being control of the uh the the interaction and someone else being control ultimately of like when you sign a user agreement and you have all this information that you just sort of put up online you're you're entrusting it to them and in turn they're marketing it to you I mean that's it's it's a really a clean relationship as long as they don't [ __ ] you but yeah yeah I mean there's a point at which you know I'm all I'll let Netflix and I whoever's in behind my TV remote I mean now they know all that stuff right I mean I'll let them craft commercials around me it's like I'll I'll accept in this in this little uh arrangement we have with business I'll accept anything incoming you know but don't use me for your outgoing in other words once you're taking the person's identity and then saying oh you know Alice down the street liked this uh sitcom too you should watch that and then my what I'm watching is getting broadcast to them or what they think I'd be watching that's where it starts to be like oh now I'm being disembodied now I'm being taken I think yeah it's it's a great Facebook is one of the most popular websites online and it's also one of the best ways to waste time like you can waste a day easily just looking up people that you used to have sex with you know just finding them and go what is this [ __ ] up to oh my goodness look how fat she got you know you can do that all day you do that all day and that could be you know entertain and you're not getting [ __ ] done it's just it's like the I try to uh use Twitter um one of the things that I do with it is when where whenever someone sends me something fascinating in a link I I retweet it um and because of that you you become like a portal for cool [ __ ] and people know that if they send me cool [ __ ] I'll retweet it and so you get
all this cool [ __ ] just starts coming to you when you sort of have that idea and then you send it they send it to you and then it becomes this really exponentially expanding thing where you know you you have this like a radio channel or or like an information dump what percent of the the tweets that you get do you think you pass on uh it's not that high a percentage because it's not always filter well I'll I have to look at it you know I mean if it's really interesting I'll look at it but sometimes they'll send you something you're like oh dude that's nonsense like what are you talk did you see where this came from like you read the link and you're like no that that is not Bigfoot and that guy's refrigerator shut the [ __ ] up man stop sending me this but but that makes you reliable a reliable filter yeah you can't just retweet things but I do R occasionally if someone sends something really Preposterous I will retweet it just to see how people react you know there's um or if someone if people get mad at me I'll retweet it just to see how they react it's just it's a we live in strange times man it's uh the the the the Twitter interface is a very bizarre one the idea that you only give them 140 characters and people abuse the [ __ ] out of that sometimes people send me like 30 Tweets in a row like explaining something to me like dude stop well now you know it's all the the do you know things like Snapchat have you played with that or no what is that the one where you you take a picture and it like you can send it but it dissolves in like 3 seconds or five seconds right so it's like kids apparently I mean this is The Dark Secret kids are leaving Facebook you know the the demographic the younger like you knower than 16 is like falling totally off and they're doing things like Snapchat because they don't want they don't want to be putting everything they're doing on their permanent record I mean they're finally so this picture like they can show someone they're [ __ ] and it only lasts for 3 minutes and you seconds you screenshot it though and then you save it reupload it well he knows but if you screenshot it it at least tells him that they've uh uh I mean so it's been defeated it's been but if you screen save it they at least the
person who sent you the thing knows that you did that they've they've given given that control but yeah but just this quest for truly uh uh you know truly present based non archivable sill but you know it's cuz when we were Silly we got to do you was the parking lot of the 7-Eleven it's like and there was no camera the back either it was really just what happens in 7-Eleven stays at 7-Eleven you know now it's like it's every single silly thing they did if they didn't post about it their friend posted about it so it's still up there and it's like may as well we patch you know patching to the side of the the Parthenon not only that but the the ideas behind what you can and can't do are enforced by these archaic laws that were written when none of this digital technology was available so because of that you get a lot of weird [ __ ] happens like there's a one girl who got charged with child pornography cuz she she was sending photos of her naked body to Boys in her class and so the cops arrested her and charged this young girl she was 15 years old with child pornography sending pictures yeah they I mean you talk about losing the scripts that's that's really losing the script for life I mean that is that is the nuttiest [ __ ] ever you're you found a child porn Kingpin right there she happens to be child yeah like yeah exactly zero tolerance son it doesn't matter if she's a child but Dad that's it's her vagina it doesn't matter son she's a criminal she's victimizing she's mation is rape exactly dark hunger she's feeding the dark hunger son we need to discourage this in a big way solitary confinement yeah but that's really just a temporal lag hopefully yeah I believe so I think uh that our laws then catch up are we I mean and also I mean some sense a l lack of privacy could help that along too it's like if you know if Google camera is finding like tens of thousands of people who are just smoking joints in the street of every American city you know at some point they have to go okay let let people smoke pot let gays get married I would say yes except the smoke pot thing there's money and and enforcing it the biggest issue is there more money in enforcing it there would be in selling it no but it would be to different people and you have to pry it
from the hands of the people that are making money by keeping it illegal whether it's the the private prison industry whether it's the prison guards unions whether it's different pharmaceutical companies that would stand to lose profits what there's going to be a bunch of people that are trying to stop anything any change and especially changes in legality because there's a big business in locking people up for [ __ ] I know so they're going to have to maintain a an illegal population right in order to stay alive they're going to have to arrest more and more if they're going to have corporate growth greater greater percentage of America has to be in prison every single year until it's an ASM totic curve and there's like one guy left that becomes a really interesting scenario if marijuana does become legal and you can trade on the future of marijuana what the [ __ ] marijuana does have a there are some stocks that that are marijuana stocks really yeah that people trade how is that possible well they're the companies that I guess that have already uh laid out a marijuana strategy or they're ready for it look at that percentage of the prison population that are nonviolent drug offenders in the 1980 and then in 2012 10% and then 2012 it's 25% yeah the War on Drugs folks they're winning more people are in jail I guess does that does that mean they're winning I don't know as long as we have a private prison system it's good for the economy the whole thing is [ __ ] bananas it it's just the the fact that in this day and age you still can't make make a logical argument as to why certain things are legal and illegal certain things that are legal which are devastating to your health and then when you find out that information's been withheld and that companies may have KN known about certain risks no one seems to go to jail if anything happens people get fined a little bit but if that was an individual a person that did that oh my god there would be a horrible human being a personal person one person who's responsible for all the deaths that came from aspirin alone you would want him dead well that's why there's some there's some ways to get more conscious of it though cuz it's all of us right
it's all of us who are part of that system or owning that Corporation or shareholders or whatever and there are these things like um have you ever seen slaveryfootprint.org no it's a it's a fun website you got to do it when you're feeling good about yourself though what it does is um uh you you put in everything that you own if you have a car or not where you live and this and that and it calculates how many slaves are working for you right now God and like with like getting yeah getting the malum for your iPhone or whatever it is or you know losing their fingers and some uh is that a real thing malum malum malum yeah it's a metal it's a rare rare metal wow I never hold that one I've just recently heard of col tan that's the stuff that they get in the Congo that for cell phones something that's really good with or connectivity yeah something to do with electronic connectivity and the use of her cell phones it's i' I found it to be so bizarre and one of the more bizarre things in life that the most complex stuff that we use like cell phones like computers that the very base of it the origins are there's a mine there's a hole in the ground but there's also human suffering which is why I don't like the idea that my computer which could really do everything I needed to do is rendered obsolete By changes in operating systems that right really are unnecessary except to sell another computer you know the the difference does not uh but aren't they necessary because they're trying to continue to improve the product and they're continuing to add more functionality and I stop believing that at least at the rate at which they do I sometimes feel like there's a uh it used to be sort of Windows and Intel that you know Windows would make a complex operating system so that you'd have to get the next Intel chip and then Intel would would create a tweak on that that makes you need the next uh uh you know the next Windows operating system they sort of would leap Frogg each other and it feels like that with um yeah you know your your yeah your iPhone does better things now than three iPhones ago but what about all these iPhones in the garbage and all these people who lost all this stuff the amount of time compressed into one of these one of
these devices is really intense you know that that at least one of our our our goals when we're developing new technologies and new technology pathway should be well what's the one that's going to actually require the sales of the least of the fewest amount of computers I don't know many people at Apple are going how could we sell how could we need to sell less computers so that we're you know people don't have to throw out these old ones have you seen those photos of Cuba of the old cars yeah cuz Cuba doesn't get new cars they have cars from like the 50s and the [ __ ] 60s and they keep lot of them are gorgeous though yeah they're beautiful but they do drive like [ __ ] that's the problem if you drive like a modern-day BMW and then you go back to one of those stupid Chevys from the 1950s those things are dog [ __ ] they break terrible they they handle like a horse on roller skates they're ridiculous cars they're so stupid you had to be thrown into Rebel Without a Cause today and you hopped in that car it would not be the it wouldn't be the experience we're thinking they're dog [ __ ] they're terrible you could with a Prius you could easily get away from some guy in a 55 Chevy there's no way he could keep up there's like those things are terrible they can't take Corners the brakes are those stupid drum breaks I mean they might as well have a rock that you throw out that's attached to a rope to slow your car down still you take a you take a 57 t- bird over a over a segue yes yes over just because it could rain okay but I like the idea that you know they've managed to recycle these cars and keep them working and keep them running and it's it's really cool to see aesthetically it's beautiful it's gorgeous I mean you see a modern Street in this day and age and you see these beautiful like and you could tell they're proud people because these are shiny cars I mean they're they're painted nice and they're done well and they're restored well or or at least maintained well I mean I don't know how many miles some of these cars have on them but they're they do look it does look amazing I know and there is that you know I feel like there's a a hunger for stuff not just 50s but also sort of 60s Madmen period that the Nostalgia for that is sort of that's right before this
digital age started that's like the height of the TV age and you know putting satellites in space there was that innocence you know you know it's funny because people look at these kind of shows and say oh you know aren't they uh uh you know it's about it's about their uh you know decadence and I'm like no it's about their innocence you know they believe and they're they got you know it's that you know and you look go around La it's like everybody's got Heywood Wakefield in their house and trying to get those old GE refrigerators with the sort of rounded covers you know there's that longing for uh it's like the Industrial Age just feels so real you know this is solid when people made stuff you know it wasn't just kind of printed right yeah there's that that also like when you see those cars there's like such a human element in that old stuff like even like 60s muscle cars like those were sort of like human created works of art as opposed to you know you look at like a new Mazda or something like that a real modern car and they like looks like something that just like came out of a machine they screwed it together and it came out of a machine you look at like a 69 Chevy that doesn't like a Chevy Camaro 69 Camaro that's that's something somebody [ __ ] screwed together there's some men working behind that there's some people put tires on on the wheel and bolted it down in place there's some guys who work some wrenches there's no doubt about it you look at that thing that's a mechanical creation it's not a a computer creation and we're slowly moving towards the Prius and I'm I'm fine with computer creation aesthetic if it means that we don't have to work right you know but it's like they didn't it's like so they get rid of all those guys screwing in the the the screws and it's like so they just then let them stay in their houses no those guys are [ __ ] they end up [ __ ] those guys have to pick up lot of work they have tool but now that's the whole thing too it's like so now we have the big problem in America is unemployment and Obama's talking about getting jobs jobs jobs for people who wants a job I don't want a job you don't want a job people don't want jobs people want the stuff that you get when you have a job they want the money that you get for having a job but
they don't want the jobs so meanwhile though we've got more than enough stuff we're burning food every week to keep market prices High we're tearing down Bank of America is tearing down houses in California because they're in forclosure you can't just let someone live in it it's going to bring prices they tear them down they tear them down why do they tear them down because they're they would have to sell at distressed prices that would then lower prices of other properties that they're trying to keep up W it cost them more I mean if you own 10 houses in a town and one isn't going to sell you'd rather tear it down than right and if the bank comes along and creates some sort of a program to give houses to needy people then it's going to lower the real estate values of the of the mortgages that they've invested in that are already teetering so they can't do that so charity itself becomes unprofitable well it's never been quite profitable is Charity what if we figured out that okay we only need rather than having everybody work 40 hour weeks which is based on a clock of the Industrial Age how much can we have people work and at weekend what if people don't really have to work that much for us to have everything we want right right what if 10% of people could work you know two days a week and we get everything we so you go in you do your work I'm going to do my work in April 2007 you know and then I'm going to go again in March what if it got that you really didn't need everybody working all the time for everybody to have stuff we couldn't deal with that not because we don't have Technologies to do that we can't deal with it because we don't have an economy we don't know how to divvy out the spoils you know the reason that you have a job is so that you can be entitled to a share of what's actually in abundance but because there's not enough jobs for people we got to rip up stuff and ruin stuff that's in abundance right we can't give it out there's also the social issue of not having jobs when people don't feel like they've made their own way or pulled their own weight they feel un they they feel issue but you got to replace employment you know with work you know employment is a new invention employment again Industrial Age we used to work for
each other and ourselves we only got jobs when we got the clock when we could work on the clock then we're employed right but we don't have to be employed in order to work in order to have meaning if you don't have to have your job you don't stop so you just have to find a new Niche into the system you have to find a a new thing a new way to contribute to your to the world yeah I completely agree with that that too many people find sort of of a a a pre-existing way to interact and they don't create their own way to interact and in in doing so you often times Miss on one of the best things which is accomplishing things whether it's accomplishing starting your own restaurant and keeping it open and or you know having a car shop that only fixes a certain type of automobile that you really love to work on you know when you can figure out a way to do something that you actually have a passion for and it's like that the the old cliche it stops becoming worse it just it becomes you're you don't really have a job you have uh a thing that you love right and you're in flow at that point but how many people have that that's a real problem how many you can't have it in this kind of economy you can't have it when you're have this kind of education system you can't have it what about just real naturally dull people that need to be pushed certain direction well yeah but you know so not everyone has to be the one that figures out how to do the new method of biodynamic Rudolph Steiner farming on there organic community supported agriculture plant someone can just go there and plant you know plant carrots it's also the issue of how human beings are raised in the first place which is so huge and not really addressed the the reason why some of these people fall into these mindless jobs is because never along the line have they been stimulated never along the line by their family by the school systems by their environment by their Atmosphere by their you know their fellow Knuckleheads in their Community they're all just surrounded by people who are either like-minded or less or you know or supported and they're you're kind of [ __ ] and then when something comes along that eliminates that job for that guy that robot job when he was 45 years old or 50 years old he has to
start again and sort of reignite some sort of passion and curiosity or die off like a dinosaur and it's hard too cuz he was liking the thing he did you know he just a toll collector you know and you get better and better at it and then you start you know then test to see how many people can make eye contact with when you're getting the tolls and how many lives can you change with that eye I mean gosh you can be this you could live the bodh SATA Life as a toll collector you know they take that away from him and it's not just that he can't be retrained he doesn't have motivation you know what I mean it's not that not his fault that they broke his heart you know they should have a show where a guy's a toll collector and just see how he interacts with people and then give them projects like today you're just going to casually mention your penis and let's see how many people freak out back to your back to your reality Roots yeah it' be funny you do you have you do a toll collector you got to do it pretty fast oh yeah well it's it's a that'd be a weird way to experiment how people interact when they don't have to when it's really quick you know how many people treat you like [ __ ] how many people like how you doing what's going on everything cool all right man you take care you know there you're going to get a broad variety of the way people interact with you I think that would be kind of fascinating it wouldn't like hold up as a series but maybe as speci hour special the toll guy yeah yeah yeah just have a guy and you have we have to do like you break it up with like we'll sit down little chairs and then have a discussion about the last couple of ones that we've seen and what it really means people love that FasTrack thing now though they won't don't want to pay a toll they want to put that little thing up there and they just go through like New York is one of the weirdest scenarios ever because somewhere along the line they just decided to make people pay to get to the city it used to be that they were paying to get the Bridge built but they paid that [ __ ] thing off a long time ago every bridge got paid off a long time ago but the revenue is so intoxicating they just kept with it we can't understand that in
California cuz we don't really have a pl we get anywhere those bridges were built but now they got to all be rebuilt they rebuilt those Hudson Bridge they were building it building it building it and by the time they finished they had to start rebuilding it again it took that many years two reasons why that's nonsense the the big one is is the dumbest way to make traffic you have a spot where everyone has to stop on the way into the city that is so stupid when you are going from Long Island to Manhattan that is the most maddening [ __ ] to do at 8:30 in the morning you want to [ __ ] kill somebody cuz it's so stupid you're making me stop at your little box you should make people pay you either either you could justify the constru of the bridge the maintaining of the bridge but they should pay for it through their taxes and that's it there shouldn't be a spot where you have to stop because that's [ __ ] dumb the only reason why you would want to do that is you want to check cars for bombs or nutty people or you're just trying to discourage yeah well I guess environmentalist trying to discourage get people onto lir and do Rapid Transit the way God intended and discourage people from coming into the city because the the easier it is to get into the city the more the traffic sucks and it sucks already it's terrible you make it suck and then charge for making it not suck here's the special fix suck you can't fix the suck that way you're just making more sucken for $20 we'll give you the green light do you live in Manhattan no do you live in New York I did I live in New York I live in Westchester County now oh I lived in New relle for a little bit Yeah Yeah Hastings on Hudson oh yeah it's um that's a that's a beautiful area that's nice that whole Westchester has got some nice spots yeah it does it's a little snoody some of it so there's a couple of towns in Westchester that kind of retain some connection to reality you know it's not just Westchester is weird it is though you'll be in a neighborhood where you're seeing these mansions with these giant Lawns and then you'll go a half a mile and you're in the projects and you're like not projects so a little more Jersey Jersey esque I mean you drive through oranges that it really you
get that sense I mean most of Westchester is pretty uh pretty affluent at this point you know but you know it's not as affluent as Manhattan you Manhattan's the most affluent in that area right well yeah I mean if you're inside Bloomberg's bubble if you made it in there somehow you know when when an apartment was a million now you've got $10 million of real estate or something but um you know anywhere else didn't quite it's not quite that bad those places are Madness those multi-million dollar apartments and like the the way of living in a big city like that is so alien it's only exists in Manhattan where you have so many people living in apartments and it creates it's a different community and in in a sense it's more connected than than Los Angeles is oh it is I mean most things about it are are kind of more consonant with our era and our digital economy and all that it's a better carbon footprint to stack people up like that that they have everybody having Lawns and fertilizer and whatever else they get in the suburbs so I mean it's it's it's good on on most of those levels it's just New York itself is so crazy expensive you know through God knows what sort of real estate Shenanigans are done that's what sort of then for me colors the uh the experience of of you know Urban Joy there you know no one is an artist or or you know a writer regular of of regular uh means could live there yeah that's where it gets really crazy where you see a small apartment is like 3,000 bucks a month and you're like okay that's just nuts that means a guy who makes $50,000 a year has to give up 3ar of his income to pay his [ __ ] rent that's nuts right so it's like I mean I don't know if you need crime uh uh to to make it better but you know if you go back to the the the era of you know basat you know he couldn't live in in Manhattan now you know none of the none of the folks from then or the Ramones or well they were Queens actually but uh uh you know Warhol or any of his do you remember 42nd Street the real 4 but that's the thing though it's like it was also was criminal it was you know it was awful terrifying yeah it was terrifying and yeah there's certain some part that wax is nostalgic but that's not a good old days that you really want to return to
either it's just like how can you have a New York that works and is still artistic and alive and vibrant and ferle and not have people you know getting stabbed in the Subways yeah and how can you have so many rich people living together because you have to be rich to live there I mean it's it's really difficult to pull off living in Manhattan if you don't have at least least you know of upper middle class income so yeah it's a strange strange Place unlike any place in this country you know there's no place in the country that's so overvalued you can get a decent apartment in San Francisco for half of what you'd spend on an apartment in Manhattan I think although San Francisco now has gotten the worst something one of those lists well made it the worst um there's some places outside of San Francisco that are just insane like where're um near uh Stanford uh they have um I think it's called aen it's the highest real estate in the country uh and you you look at these people that I know had this house up there is it's an acre and a half was worth $15 million [ __ ] looking at this house like what are you talking about it doesn't make any sense but it's like everybody in that neighborhood is all they're all tech people they all they all made insane amounts of money in the various Tech Bubbles and Booms over the years and all that Google money's up there and all that Apple money's up there and this just a lot of [ __ ] people that have incredible amounts of cash up there so real estate they need houses this is where they live so real estate's through the [ __ ] roof right like you will look if you look at like I I I enjoy doing that sometimes like hm could I live in Phoenix let's see what you know what the neighborhoods are like in Phoenix and I'll go look at real estate in Phoenix for a goof you look in Aon and what's $1 million you're like get the [ __ ] out of here that's $1 million well they got to be you know bike distance from Facebook or wherever is it's an amazing bubble of uh of money a a strange one a really strange one because again you go a mile over and we stopped at this Wendy's and it was like a really sketchy Wendy's like really like this place is kind of [ __ ] dirt baggish to be a mile away from a $15
million house like it's so strange well there's no middle anymore you know that sort of got got got spun out in the in this spin cycle at the end of the the end of this Industrial Age here well you can't say there's n but I mean there certainly a diminished very little very little but you know like you're saying though if if the if that lower 98% or 99% whatever it is uh gets fed up enough it'll network with itself rather than trying to get something down from the top it's not even fed up it seems like we only act when we forced to act we we need a desperation we need you know we need to have no options and then we move into this new stage of understanding what the [ __ ] the real problem really is but that's and that's different and again that's that's the whole point of of being in the present of presentism is that instead of going on some long march on some other 20th century movement sort of this eyes on the prize ends just the mean justify the means battle to the Future thing we go screw all that we just want it now we're going to just do it that's what was so encouraging about the Occupy Movement they what are your demands what do you want from us we don't want anything from you you know it's like we're not going to State our demands we're going to actually do this thing MH you know and that's where again but do what thing though the the real issue OCC try to occupy the world in which we live I I like in the Occupy Movement to white blood cells like they recognize there's an issue and they they gather around it and you know it's like it calls attention to the issue and you know they're but they they're they're gathering around a sick spot I mean that that they know there's something wrong here and so everybody's like look this is a spot it's all going down right there right and then they try to educate they do teachings and learn about stuff a lot of a lot of people know more about these issues now than did before and they see it as a super long-term project I mean this year they did um occupy debt and the debt Jubilee so what they're doing is buying Pennies on the dollar the debt of people like who've got you know Health bills they can't pay and all that because it's just owned by credit companies so they buy the debt and just relieve it wow so it's kind of cool you
know they take $10 and relieve like a thousand bucks of debt it's well worth it that's interesting that's a great idea and I think that's a a great Community idea that there's a lot of people out there that have a spare $5 or a spare $10 you wouldn't even think about but if you get enough of those people you can enact some real change and and really help people um what do you think is like what what is the best way besides podcasting and besides books and besides having actual conversations with people where you explore these ideas what is what is the best way to get people to understand that true happiness really does come from a sense of community one of the interviews that I saw with you you you were talking about your Youth and you were talking about living in a place where you all shared a large backyard and it became sort of a community thing where everybody would get together and have like a barbecue and yeah so in Queens and we had it was like one barbecue pit at the end of the block that was just on all weekend that's when we were lower middle class my dad got a better job we leave Queens we go to Larchmont and Scarsdale these you know these Westchester towns yeah and it's like you don't barbecue with the Joneses anymore you barbecue against the Joneses like every single family's got its own like $300 Weber Grill in the backyard and no one would think you know it's like you can invite someone over I suppose but it's not that barbecuing was this solo family activity and I was thinking well as far as the grill company is concerned that's better they'd rather everyone have a grill and nobody Grill together because then they get to sell more grills you know but what it's like I've looked in my uh uh not the neighborhood I'm in now but neighborhood I almost went to it's like everybody on the Block had a snowblower and I'm thinking that's really weird there's like 10 houses with 10 snowblowers how many snow blowers do you need for a driveway it's like can't like every two houses share one or every four houses share one yeah but what if you want to just get up in the morning and you don't want to talk to Mr Johnson see if you can use the snowblower first cuz you got to be at work at 7:30 you don't want to talk to Mr Johnson is the thing
May's a douchebag maybe you should be able to have your own snowblower maybe there is there isn't his douchebag is cuz he's working overtime to save up for that goddamn snowblower easily right what yeah well there's not a lot of people that are happy out there the rose quote that most men leave lives of Silent desperation or today loud desperation and Marshall mclin's quote that humans are the sex organs of the Machine World yeah and that has this desire to keep up with the Joneses you got to pay for those Weber grills you know as disconnects us no I walk in a room now and I it feels different when I see people sitting on their devices you know you used to walk into a room with a bunch of guys you walk in here and you guys have devices but you can feel the family you know you can feel you guys are on a on an animal level in touch with each other's Vibe right on whatever that subtle level is and I go into rooms now and I don't feel the same group dynamic group presence that I used to even teaching a class you know 20 years ago versus going into one today when everybody's you know tweeting what's going on in there it's just a different I'm not saying it's worse although I think it's worse um a qualitatively different experience they have more Choice over what they do they can divide their attention the way they want they have more autonomy over all these things but they're losing um and maybe it's out there on the net somewhere maybe by the time we're in the great great second life we reconnect but they're they're missing a certain subtle animal contact that we don't yet fully understand maybe it just needs to be mitigated like maybe we need to just uh understand and and explore like the ethics of uh when to and not to use cell phones when to and not to connect and encourage more connection and like let people know that like look that is an Impulse just like washing your hands too much or just like there's a there's a like a lack of satisfaction in the um satisfying or the uh completion of that impulse the to check your Twitter you check your Twitter check your Twitter again what are you getting out of that why why not pay attention to the person who's in front of you you're doing it just like a Nutty person washes their
hands 100 times me that's the whole point that's the whole reason I write you know my books are the book before this one's called program or be programmed and the idea was just to give people sort of the 10 biases of digital media like they're really good for doing things far away they're not good for doing things with someone in the same room you know because they're there you know just really simple stuff like that or this time idea you know that's which is that digital technology is asynchronous it doesn't live in time so don't you try to keep up with it cuz it's not in your temporal Universe it's in its own you know and you can make it conform to yours but certainly don't run and chase it it's that it's kind of it's at this point it's education it's just having the conversation letting people I I I'm that's the whole thing if they become more aware then you know then they stand a chance I I certainly think a lot of these things have sort of snuck up on us and we could all do with a lesson or at least an an idea uh of uh how to manage them more more right more humanly exactly and the trick is for people not to see and this has been my whole thing not to see the messenger of this as the one who's saying oh this stuff's so bad oh wo the children are turning more violent you know that whole kind of PBS is um hand ringing thing that so many writers are out there it's like are you for technology or against it are you for it or against it you know and if you're not just going yay yeah yay go business they think you're against it it's like no no I'm for technology I'm just against the way we're happen to be using it right now I don't think there's a any I don't think it's a coincidence that people are I think fundamentally less happy now I think than they have been in a long time if you look at the amount of people that are on medication uh for happiness that's really what it is if you're on an anti-depressant essentially you're on a medication for happiness and whether or not that's because of a chemical imbalance that you suffer from or because of the fact that your job sucks and your life sucks and you you just you're just filled with suck every day and you're responding to that well for whatever it is if you look at those numbers one or two things is happening
probably both one we're getting [ __ ] over by these pharmaceutical companies and they're they get unethical doctors to prescribe that [ __ ] with impunity there's that for sure but then there's also like people are not connecting to this world they don't they don't feel whole they don't feel satisfied and if you're in great pain it's better to only be in moderate pain or mild pain if you can take a pill I mean what's hard to do is to get people to go oh well actually that pain is is kind of a good sign because it means that we all need to kind of work here to change change the way the world is and and uh and take some action the pain is trying to get you to change the pain is trying to get you to avoid the pain and you should use your logic to say well what's causing this pain well there's a disconnect I'm not I'm not I'm not emotionally satisfied I'm not connecting with my fellow humans I'm missing something right unless you're up against the wall and there's nothing you can do to change your circumstances in which case you're going to take the pill you know it's that's the that's the danger there but I do think the more people can start to get in touch you know for me it's these rhythms you know the rhythms of life you know the 28 day lunar cycle and the fact that each week of a lunar cycle your neurotransmitters change right so you have an acetylcholine week followed by a serotonin week followed by a dopamine week followed by a norepinephrine week it's like every month this one b boom B bum B bum if you know that then you're like oh this is the dopamine week that's why I feel like this or I'm getting strangely anal how do you know when it's a dopamine week now you go to actually there's a website somaspace dorg that he's got it he's got it laid out there was originally was an Olympic trainer um Irving dardic who figured this stuff out he was uh doing like exercising people different times of the day and different parts of the month and they you know they've been looking at bio you know uh biological clocks for many years ever since the you know Major League Baseball pretty much discovered jet lag that people you know get more jet lag when they travel west to east than east to west they realize oh these clocks are not folklore there's actually something going on here so there's circadian
rhythms for the day and the night but there's also all these other rhythms controlled by different you know uh you know weather and astronomical features and traveling like that really does [ __ ] with those rhythms right yeah yeah but as people get in touch with them um I think it could help us uh you know get out of some of these uh uh you know drug uh drug relationships that we're having you know where we taking drugs in order to compensate for those shifting neuro neurotransmitters because we're trying to be on all the time I'm in sales so I got to be in sales when I'm in dopamine week or in serotonin week week you know and that's that's hard well there's also the the arrogance of the human mind to think that it can manipulate the human mind you know the human mind going look I don't like how things are running here I think I am going to take over the running of me and uh I'm going to invent some [ __ ] that makes me run more to my liking I'd rather just be okay with everything uh I want to be high all the time and okay with everything okay can you get that and then one day they're going to get what you feel like when you're on ecstasy and it's going to be keep it all day just be on ecstasy all day enjoying the world wow I've never seen this guy this color blue you're going to be so let you have those though they don't let you genuinely have those drugs because when if you're as high as you are in ecstasy or as high as you are in pot then you start figuring things out then you start unwinding that relationship and becoming less dependent on that it could yeah I mean even just a shift in the the levels of things and the approach to things gives you uh oh this is a new Consciousness space that I'm occupying here for whether it's a brief moment or a long drawn out crazy trip right and different than the sort sort of paliative care of of you know Pharmaceuticals sure yeah yeah that that does the exact opposite it's true the ones that are available that you could buy on a regular basis are the ones that bring you closer to the hive drone exactly like slow you yeah just will let you accept more and take more even you know caffeine and alcohol you know are such you know easier for them to tolerate the one that's interesting that sort of is playing both sides of the of the field here is atero
you know what I mean cuz they use it to control little kids you all it's like Rin it's one of these uh add drugs that keeps those kids from you know acting out or whatever in class but also the counterculture is taking it for uh you know to write to write or work or to get that uh uh kind of a more like to work right I've never [ __ ] with it but the people that I know that have said it said it kind of campers creativity right I guess I guess it's more for uh it's more like a speedy thing yeah cramming for a test yeah yeah like getting work done organizing [ __ ] like my friend Robert shimel rest his soul uh he um he accidentally took it once and he had heart issues it was kind of a crazy story he he picked up the wrong pill of someone else's prescription and and took an Aderall and he called his doctor it's like what am I in trouble am I I'm scared you know I got this heart condition the guy's like you're going to be fine you're going to be fine you're just you're going to be you're going to be uh doing a lot of things over the next few hours just accept that so he takes it and he said he starts [ __ ] organizing office and he sat down in front of his notes and he said I got more work done than I've ever gotten before but well yeah why they call it speed yeah but it's a it's a great pay a price yeah it's the ultimate Industrial Age drug I guess cuz it it makes you more more productive more efficient I've had quite a few friends who've had an issue with it several you know a good friend very smart guy who uh just went um just got off of it and you know he he went crazy with it for like several months and he was uh starting up a business and working with the tech company and there was a lot of hours and he just just took a little adall to help him along the way and next thing you know he needed an adall every yeah yeah they do say this the sort of I think speed long-term speed use is the closest they can model schizophrenia with drugs you know if you've been on speed freak for a really long time you get way closer than with any you know psychedelic or something yeah to well it just seems like it just redlines your system Lindsay Lohan's plea deal one string attached I want my ader all is that TMZ yeah you know she's supposed to be in that like prison or that rehab for
the next whatever 6090 days she's trying to get a plea deal so she can get ader all in wait a minute they're putting her in jail again yeah what for this time uh I think it was for hit and run back in 2010 or something like that I can't remember poor kid I've been following it boy there's another weird aspect of our new society that children become famous you know that I mean back in the Shirley Temple days when they invented that thought yeah who would have ever thought that you would get a person like a Lindsay Lohan we raised them from the time they're a child and they never know anonymity and just long to escape every day longing to get [ __ ] up and just Drift Away in a drunken stuper and not have to think about it yeah and they can't leave it is the thing cuz they're also addicted to uh to it yeah and if you do leave it it's almost almost worse to been a has been than to be a never was a never was you see a person walk down the street you never go oh look at that loser he was never famous he just go oh there's a guy so I'll tell you there it reminds me there was this moment that I still don't know exactly how I feel about it when they did the uh they did the Brady Bunch reunion it's like 10 years after the show whatever 20 years and Jan didn't show up they had a different girl for Jan and I was like you go girl in other words she broke free moved on yeah you know there she probably Eve Plum she probably got you know all this crap for not going and a lot of people probably thought oh because she's probably too screwed up or some problem whatever and I'm like no you know you went you went into the future you know and you're not going to let that just you know Define you no matter what yeah or she wanted money and they didn't want P give her yeah who knows who knows who knows I know that's media is good for projecting but there's something very sad about people that live completely in the past like if you were on a show in the 1970s and you're still going to those autograph signing things and it's hard I heard uh who was it Barbara Eden on the radio you know I dreo Genie yeah and I was thinking man that's one of those it's one of those things well Barbara Eden also was in a time where you didn't make money like you didn't
get that residual cash where people are still selling I Dream of Genie she would still be getting a piece but no you didn't she didn't get she didn't get a slice back in those Gilligan Island days those guys didn't make any money they they got [ __ ] over the Gilligan Island days was uh the you know like back in the day they never knew about like syndication they didn't they didn't have any idea things are going to be worth so much money and then in a a digital form forever yeah that's pretty [ __ ] up dude I was supposed to be at my next thing by now whoops it's like 513 how long is is this podcast allowed to be or you we just go you just go people download the whole thing we never go for more than 3 hours do you have to leave is is that what you're saying supposed to where are you going next what is it what am I doing I mean I already missed 13 minutes of it um Jas calanis we at least apologize though yeah Jason calanis he does this conference called launch what is it and it's like Silicon Valley entrepreneu what's going to happen next in technology so is it like an interview or a podcast then another podcast no a a video podcast well this is too um but that's like only like you click on the thing for a digital theorist you're you're a little bit out of touch with numbers my friend no and uh thank you um and then Richard meker you know him he does dangerous um Dangerous Minds website Richard really like it he's local he does a great uh he used to do disinfo he invented that that whole website oh he did okay well Matt Matt Stags the from yeah that's where I know him from all right so you got to get the [ __ ] out of here I do dude this has been an awesome conversation really fun uh yeah it's great to meet you great to meet you too thank you very much for coming on and people please uh go pick up his book it's called Uh Future Shock pres excuse me present shock when everything happens now right that I say right yeah okay available now is it available on audible.com um they just the company that just emailed and said they want to do the uh they want to do the audio want to do the audio book better God damn it it's crazy that it's not needs to be done right audible go Go Go Get It Go Get on it um but um uh you
could get it right now on amazon.com uh on your website Douglas rush.com rush.com U thank you very much man really appreciate a lot of fun to meet you thanks to uh the sponsors of the podcast thanks to audible.com if you go to audible.com slj you can get one free audiobook and 30 free days of audible service um thanks also to stamps.com and if you uh click on the link on stamps and use the code JRE you uh you get a special offer no risk trial plus $110 bonus offer including a digital scale that you should not use for illegal purposes thanks also to hover hover.com SL what is it Rogan or something I have too many [ __ ] things I know you should make it all the same yeah I should but I don't have control of that [ __ ] hover.com Rogan go there get 10% off your do domain name registrations and they they give you free [ __ ] like who is domain name privacy and they're awesome and thanks also to hit.com go to o n niit t and if you use a code named Rogan you save yourself 10% off any of our awesome supplements all right folks uh that's it for the week uh I got [ __ ] to do yo I'm busy I got a lot of things happening and uh next week um is going to be a little sketch cuz I'm on the road for most of the week so we might bang out one only next week try to get through it this is all temporary and we love the [ __ ] out of you dirty [ __ ] all right so we see you soon oh Indianapolis this weekend Saturday night uh April 6th I'll be in Indianapolis with Tony henchcliffe and uh if you've seen my live at the Tabernacle special that's available for five bucks on Joe rogan.net right now this set is 100% new there's nothing from that on on any of these shows so to answer all these people's questions if you should I go see you if I bought the special it's all new [ __ ] I got an hour and 20 minutes now of all new [ __ ] then I'm and I'm actually happier with it than my last special so can I just that uh Kevin prayer this week we're going to have some good podcast so if you're like freaking out needing a podcast we pendulette on Thursday oh excellent Reggie Watts tonight Excellence yeah pendulette awesome that's great you going to do it is he in town uh yeah I
think just he's in town one day or something like that wow yeah he's awesome he's a great talker too that guy will go on and on and on yeah I think we have chich and Chong next next week oh power and chich and Chong together oh interesting all right Douglas rushkoff ladies and gentlemen thank you everybody we'll see you soon all right bye [Applause] [Music]