Exit Strategy - Raw Notes Rev. N/C

One of the emerging themes that's coming out of these notes so far is the notion of Rushkoff as 'Trickster', screwing with our heads, blurring the line between motive and outcome....and the fact that the crowdsourcing method in this book allows him to do this (couple of course with his arcane knowledge as a specialist in media culture with a specific interest in the shifting foundation of reality made possible by online and wireless ubiquitous communication; additonal speculation about blending of medium and message, and which one trumps the other now, has the balance shifted?

About Rushkoff

Douglas Rushkoff's 1994 best-seller, Media Virus, was one of the first in-depth studies of popular culture in the Internet age. Rushkoff is professor of media culture at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program and an advisor to the United Nations Commission on World Culture. His latest book, BULL, has now been published online as Exit Strategy [2001]. It is, he claims, the Internet's first Open Source novel.

Source: Book Review: Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism by Douglas Rushkoff, Books in Canada, by Gwen Nowak

About 'Exit Strategy'

His book "Bull" was published online as in 2001 as Exit Strategy. It's Ruskoff's claim that it is the internet's first open source novel.

"The idea is that the whole book is discovered by anthropologists 200 years in the future. They annotate the book with explanations of our world and behaviours, for an audience that has clearly evolved past such lunacy. Readers can infer what the future might be like by looking at what the annotator feels the need to explain - profit, capitalism, condoms, Windows - and what s/he doesn't. But I had such a terrific time imagining the present from the perspective of the future, I thought other people should have this experience, too. It was while I was writing the book that the dot.com bubble burst. So I realized that people would need to vent a bit. It was no longer about me telling them how badly they were screwing up - how they were being fooled. They knew it, now. So I thought they should be let in on the game. That's when I decided to do the book on the Web, for free."

(Source: Leaving the Twentieth Century, I.T., October 5, 2001, by Ashley Crawford)

The cynic could read Exit Strategy as being no more than a very clever marketing ploy to sell hard-copy books. Has that been suggested?
DR [Rushkoff]: Only by journalists supposing that other people will think this way. If someone thinks that giving away a book online for free (instead of taking the fat traditional publishing advance) is some kind of marketing ploy, then they very badly need to read this book. That kind of cynicism is precisely what needs to be exorcised through good satire.

(Source: Leaving the Twentieth Century, I.T., October 5, 2001, by Ashley Crawford)

It sounds like a noble concept, but I still have a few niggling doubts, driven by statements such as the following:

"all sorts of sick ideas like Web site 'stickiness' and e-commerce architecture developed, and really fit in with my sense of how the Internet would be used to promote a market sensibility above all else."

(Source: Leaving the Twentieth Century, I.T., October 5, 2001, by Ashley Crawford)

With statements like the above, is there a chance that his motives are not 100% as noble as he claims? Is there any suggestion that Rushkoff is actually cynically doing just what he's accusing others of? Of manipulating the ideals of the on-line community into contributing to his literary success (add some notes/references in here...he does claim to be donating any proceeds to the Electronic Freedom Foundation. It might be nice to look into this, verify it, find out how much has been realized).

"[Rushkoff's earlier book, Nohting Sacred] is really just an allegory of the story of Joseph from the Bible. He's the dreamer who sells out and becomes the right-hand man of the Pharaoh. And then he builds pyramids. And he invites all his brothers down into Egypt to help, and they all become slaves. The idea is that people who build pyramids - whether out of stone or investments - are slaves. And this slavery can be induced through interface, of course. Media is the place we influence one another - and we can do this fairly or unfairly, through communication or through coercion. Millions of dollars are being spent on what is called "captology" - this is the science of how to direct and force certain human behaviors through interface. It made sense to me that if a culture dedicates its technologies to increasing the bottom line at the expense of everything else, we will see self-mutating programs that evolve to increase their effectiveness at steering human thought and activity. It's not the technology that's to blame, at all, though. It's the way technology can be used to energize the corporate agenda. "

(Source: Leaving the Twentieth Century, I.T., October 5, 2001, by Ashley Crawford)

"My work is almost always about waking people up. It's why this novel has the participatory distancing devices."

(Source: Leaving the Twentieth Century, I.T., October 5, 2001, by Ashley Crawford)"today's renaissance makes us feel that our self-expression matters too"
(source: 21st Century Renaissance, March 31)
http://www.rushkoff.com/TheFeatureArchive/twentyfirstcentury.html

Question: Is Exit Strategy too self-conscious? Too much an experiment whose means might have been interesting but not justified by the end? Is it too 'meta'? Is the end product/output worthwhile or stand on its own outside of the method of its creation

Does it even matter? As the author himself says in one of his online essays:

"No matter how colorful you make it, content will never be king in a wireless world. It's not the content that matters - it's the contact."

Source: TSocial Currency, September 2003 Social Currency, September 2003

And yet, as those of us who create content know (hope?) (pray?), content does matter. It may not be king, but it does matter. Without content, we're all just sitting in front of our high-priced flat-panel, gas-plasma monitors watching Pong.

And we learn more every day about the way in which creating content in a networked world influences not only what we create, but how we do it: we are held to account – immediately – by our peers for what we say; we have no need to paraphrase/abstract an entire books' conclusions in a paragraph or two, footnote and hope that we've covered ourselves sufficiently -- hypertext and links allow immediate retrieval of reams of background, and it's at the pull of the reader, as opposed to the push of the writer. It's writer as filtering service, perhaps? As intelligent agent?

So, what does Rushkoff's experiment tell us about writing crowdsourced fiction (still hate that damn term, btw). What can we derive about the future of content creation (writing, for those of us who hearken back to the days of goose quills and elderberry ink).

Rushkoff, commenting on Stephen King's failed online experiment:

DR: Stephen King flopped because he saw the online space as a distribution platform. Things will work here that are native to the interactive space. It's not a place to distribute a book. That's not what I'm doing. It's a place to create interactive narrative experiments. King failed because he was basically inaugurating a business plan, not a genre. There's a terrific future for online narrative experiences. I wouldn't call them books, though.

(Source: Leaving the Twentieth Century, I.T., October 5, 2001, by Ashley Crawford)

More food for thought. Is the very idea of "how is writing changing" an essentially transitionary thinker's notion in and of itself? Think here about the first generation of Canadians that changed from the imperial to the metric system; they all needed to think about the unit in first miles, or degrees fahrenheit, or whatever, and then do the calculations in their heads to to get to a metric equivalent. The next generation simply knew what a kilometer looked like and what 2 degrees Celsius felt like. There was no need for 'equivalency'. Maybe we'll know what 'the future of writing' looks like when we stop seeing the question being bandied about.

"A committee is good for many things; writing is not one of them."
- Lawrence M. Miller

"Instead of the sonnet, which allowed for extended comparisons, we got hypertext - the web link - that allows us to compare anything to anything else. Everything is related to everything.

And finally, our printing press is the Internet itself. But instead of simply allowing us to read and interpret texts ourselves, it allows us to write and disseminate our own. This is the big difference in our renaissance - and the part that has so many people, from politicians to priests, scared out of their wits. Dictators, ruthless businesspeople, and anyone who depends upon the silent stupidity of the "masses" are fighting to maintain control of a world that is getting smart and out of hand.

While the original renaissance made people feel that their interpretations of religion, society, and politics mattered, today's renaissance makes us feel that our self-expression matters, too. It's not enough for us to have access to great works of literature, or to pick whatever channel of programming we prefer. No, we want to be allowed to create the next great work of literature or television program, no matter what the powers that be think of us. It's not enough for us to listen to what the politician or minister has to tell us about the way things are - we want our turn at the pulpit, too. And thanks to chat rooms, weblogs, and sms buddy lists, we're getting that chance."

(Source: 21st Century Renaissance, March 31, 2003)

So to ask the question again: is Rushkoff for real? Is he helping the scales to fall from our eyes? Our is he a big fat scammer, hoping to go one better than the biggest 'marketeer' of writing of them all, Stephen King, hoping to beat him at his own game; hoping to succeed where he failed?

It's possible, just possible, that the answer is "Yes" -- to both of these questions.

"In Nothing Sacred Rushkoff states quite clearly who he thinks he is. Midway through his book Rushkoff plaintively asks, Where is Jacob? Who is still wrestling with God? His answer: Jacob, c'est moi . Rushkoff recognizes Jacob as "the first true Israelite." This inspires Jacob/Rushkoff to explain what it means to be a true Israelite in the 21 st century. As well, he reminds us that Jacob means "Trickster."

According to archetypal Trickster expert Lewis Hyde [Trickster Makes This World, 1998] Trickster can be found doing his trickster work on the road between heaven and earth, especially when that road is not open. Not surprisingly then Jacob/Rushkoff's arena of activity is that liminal space between heaven and earth, between divine and human. And Tricksters aren't afraid of paradox; they deftly juggle paradox multiples as they dance across high wire lines, dexterously avoiding falling over either way'into dualism.

Source: Book Review: Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism by Douglas Rushkoff, Books in Canada, by Gwen Nowak

The following are just some random notes; not sure where -- or if -- they will be able to fit in....

"Greco now works for Synapticom, a cult-like software company with a dress code of slippers and green robes. Jude, in contrast, remains a maverick; compiling new hacks and programs from home."

(a paraphrase of the plot of the book, from a review of Bull, by Douglas Rushkoff,
a world of hacking and fast-tracking by Christian House, independent.co.uk, 25 June 2001, http://www.rushkoff.com/reviews/bullindependent.html)

Okay, so Is Greco supposed to be an avatar of the Greek tradition, which ultimately led to modern-day capitalism, while Jude is a stand-in for Rushkoff's Judaic voice? If so, it's a bit sophomoric and overly obvious a metaphor….but then, that's just my opinion. What do the professional critics think of Rushkoff as a prose writer?

While occasionally straining under its own ambition, Bull is consistently inventive. In the preface, we learn that Jamie's story, though written in 2008, wasn't discovered until 2200. Footnotes explain terms and sentiments for a 23rd-century reader. These simultaneously translate jargon for technophobes and suggest how the world will progress over the next two centuries. Many of them are hilarious. We learn that Who Wants to be a Millionaire? transmutes from a television show into a fully fledged church and that Feng Shui was invented by "an interior designer from San Diego". Rushkoff has investigated the changing value of technology and in the process produced a compassionate, funny, human tale set in the most unlikely of environments.

http://www.rushkoff.com/reviews/bullindependent.html)

Oh, my god. I just ran across an article where Rushkoff lists his top ten books about hacking reality. And one of them is Jaynes' Breakdown. This is one of my fave 'way-out' theories (no idea if it fits in, helps us or whatever, but....):

"My favourite books remind us that reality can and should be hacked. We usually change world using the rules that currently exist, but we can also raise ourselves above the playing field and change the rules themselves. They are all arbitrary, having been written by people just like us. How does one become conscious of the way in which our world has been modelled, and empowered enough to rewrite the rules? By reading books like these."!

2. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes Jaynes makes a good case for the theory that human beings, in an earlier state of brain evolution, used to 'hear' the voice of God. What makes this book so interesting to me is less the idea that two parts of the brain used to converse with one another in this fashion, but that real human beings experienced reality in such a fundamentally different way than we do - and that equally profound shifts in our perspective could be occurring right now. How can we tell if the ways in which we conceive of things differ from the conceptions of our parents, much less our ancestors? And is this just a change in perception?"

(source: Douglas Rushkoff's Favorite Designer Reality Books, Guardian Unlimited, http://www.rushkoff.com/misc/guardiantop10.html)

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