An interesting examination of the various ways our present-ist life style seems to manifest itself and the effects of such a way of life on humanity as a whole.

Some interesting observations but I was frustrated by the broad generalizations Rushkoff needed to make to prove his points. Yes, Twitter's about the now, but it also leads me to read older/longer (and even narrative! *gasp*) content. And even though the younger generation grew up on mashups and movies/tv shows that don't have a linear narrative, it's not fair to say that's all they watch and can experience; he makes them sound like sub-humans that are incapable of understanding real life.

There's something ironic to writing a mini-review for a networked, virtual audience of simultaneously nobody and everybody. But I am compelled to say that Rushkoff, as ever, has his finger on the pulse of something here: narrative collapse, overwinding, apocalypto -- these are immensely useful terms for the pace and timbre of life in 21st c. America. It pays to take the time and read (a book, no less!) about them, if only to help orient oneself to the media, corporate, lifestyle deluge (of, admittedly, "first-world problems") we experience daily.

The premise of Doug Rushkoff’s Present Shock is that our notion of time has changed dramatically in recent decades – our focus is increasingly on the here and now and this is leaving us discombobulated and unmoored. It’s a premise that is likely to resonate with anyone struggling to keep up with the 24 hour news cycle, Twitter feeds, their email inbox(es), etc.

The big ideas in Present Shock are compelling enough:
- Narrative collapse: people have long used narratives and stories to make sense of the world but we now see the narrative tradition being challenged – news “stories” have given way to the ‘always-on format’ of CNN and, in turn, the live patter of Huffington Post op-eds and blog commentaries. On TV, we see a shift away from the traditional narrative arcs of movies and TV series to ‘in the moment’ reality shows.
- Digiphrenia: where living in a digital age disconnects us from the natural rhythms of our bodies and of the environment. But instead of designing our technologies to conform to our natural rhythms, we instead subjugate ourselves to the ‘always on’ nature of these technologies.

But overall, I found it a tough slog to make it through the book, even though it’s a comparatively short 260+ pages. Steven Johnson’s (whose Where Do Good Ideas Come From I’d just read before Rushkoff) lovely prose and yes, compelling narrative, persuades you to overlook any gaps in their logic and sweeping claims. By contrast, I found Rushkoff’s staccato style, while perhaps apt for a book entitled Present Shock, annoying. Hammer your reader with assertions, leave him breathless with the stream of imagery. Induce sensory overload. For instance:

“…instead of taking our cues from the central clock tower or the manager with the stopwatch, we carry our personal digital devices with us. Our daily schedule, dividing work time from time off, is discarded. Rather, we are always-on. Our boss isn’t the guy in the corner office, but a PDA in our pocket. Our taskmaster is depersonalized and internalized – and even more rigorous than the union busters of yesterday. There is no safe time….Time in the digital era is no longer linear but disembodied and associative. The past is not something behind us on the timeline but dispersed through the sea of information. Like a digital unconscious, the raw data sits forgotten unless accessed by a program in the future. Everything is recorded, yet almost none of it feels truly accessible. A change in file format renders decades of stored files unusable, while a silly, forgotten Facebook comment we wrote when drink can resurface at a job interview.”

I found Rushkoff’s chapter on Digiphrenia to be the most thought provoking part of the book. In it, he discusses how technology and culture gradually resulted in the daily rhythms of life being dictated by time keeping machines rather than natural rhythms. “By the 1800s, workers punched clocks to register their hours…Transcontinental commerce required synchronized activity over great distances, leading to “standard time” and the drawing of time zones across the map…In the clockwork universe, all human activity – from shift work to lunch breaks to TV viewing to blind dates – involved getting bodies to the right place at the right time, in accordance with the motions of the clock”

So what do we do? Rushkoff, suggests that for one thing, we recognize different scales of time and different kinds of time and how to navigate them. The value of an encyclopedia or a novel and the kind of time they represent are very different from that of a 24-hour new channel or a FB newsfeed. The way we should interact with stored information versus flowing information should be very different.

Overall, Present Shock provides a very uneven reading experience. Embedded within a section written in the jackhammer style is a nice anecdote. A thought-provoking chapter on Digiphrenia is followed by two repetitive chapters on Overwinding and Fractalnoia, which seem to have more anecdotes and fancy terms (fractalnoid?) than a point. Perhaps the book reflects, in some ways, Rushkoff's own struggle with different notions of time, as he uses the writing style of the Twitter feed and boing boing for a medium of storage.

Really fascinating concept and there is some good stuff in here, but the execution is lacking. The narrative was disjointed and almost incoherent -- arguments didn't stack or build, and I finished the book without feeling like he every really even *had* a central thesis or big takeaway. There is intriguing stuff, but it never feels like it's explored enough to have any real depth or staying power. This one was a bit of a letdown.

Got some very interesting perspectives.

67 pages into this book and my mind is blown- Rushkoff draws clear connections between changing media practices, the loss of a narrative structure in society, an increase in fear within the media, the Occupy Wall street movement, and gaming culture. Seemingly unrelated issues come together in a panorama of understanding . Looking forward to the delights in the rest of the book.

A book better that should have been a series of news pieces. While Rushkoff certainly makes some great points he got caught in the wave of his own passion.

At some point before I got to p. 50 I had a very distinct picture of the author being a really cranky old man railing against many of the results of 21st Century tech boom. When I saw his pic on the book jacket I had to completely redraw my mental model of him. After the first hundred pages I had to skim forward to try to find something of value. At that point I only read about 10 more pages of the 150+ remaining.

The main issue I had with the book was that he presented many issues but he no ideas for solutions - which had the effect of making almost the entire book just one man's rhetoric - albeit sincere.

I gave this a 5/10 simply for the ideas he brings up.

-tpl