Douglas Rushkoff response to James Paul Gee

These are some great and important thoughts, and help flesh out what I believe are some of Marc Prensky's issues, as well. I had these thoughts throughout filming the show, but needed to keep reminding myself of the audience, pulling myself out of my own deeply immersed 'screenager' sensibility, and into the headspace of the less initiated viewer.

I've written immersive books and made media that recreates some of the experience and sensibility of cyberian living. But I think the task here was a bit different. It wasn't to evaluate is it good or bad, but more to look at what we might be gaining and losing. If people are reading less (they are) then that's a fact. And then we have a person saying why that's a problem, and another person saying it's not. Of course Rachel, the producer and parent, has to wonder what it means that her kids might not have the same relationship with books that she does. But then she also asks whether that concern is itself a nostalgic one, denying what her kids might gain by moving on.

So I think it's more a question of how far along the "acceptance" chain a person gets. Rachel's view would appear radically pro-digital to many. I promise you, Rachel's mere suggestion that she might best accept that books are a thing of the past, and that it may be okay for kids not to read them, will be met by a big WHAAA??? from most of the show's viewers. Merely suggesting that we might need to evolve from the full-length book to something else and possibly more Twitter-like is shocking and frightening to many.

As for books killing people, well, radio did an even better job at getting mobs together. I don't know that we need to trash books in order to promote the evolution of our media ecology. It may, however, be up to book's advocates to figure out how to make them - and flesh contact, live interactions, and so on - relevant in a digital world where those things are not always valued.

So maybe moving beyond the first reactions to the film itself as good/ bad pro/negative, perhaps we should look at the bigger question being raised here, which is what questions - if any at all - should we be asking about the impact of digital media on our lives? Should we stop asking questions about it altogether, just get on the train and learn how to use this stuff to the best of our ability? Should we consider whether there's room for any human intervention at all in their development, or should we let the market just build stuff that we either buy or don't?