DIGITAL LIFE

Douglas Rushkoff criticizes the tech elite and advocates bringing estrangement to the internet

During the KES Summit, the American theorist attacked Silicon Valley's "escapist views," compared AI to the logic of the Industrial Revolution, and said the future depends on human connections and collaboration.

Writer and media theorist Douglas Rushkoff(image above), one of the most vocal critics of digital culture, was categorical in his talk at the KES Summit: technology is not an end in itself, nor should it serve only to preserve monopolies.

For him, the Silicon Valley elite treats innovation as an escape from real life and human limits. "Industry leaders see technology as a way to escape from people, from nature, from the cycles of life, to rise above the filthy stuff. But that, in my opinion, is a 'bad trip,'" he said.

According to Rushkoff, one of the most visible symptoms of this deviation is the recurring question he receives from executives and HR departments: what are people for? "I don't have to serve any purpose. I don't need to justify my existence with my utility value." We are sacred by the very fact of being born,” he stated.

For him, this inversion, where humans are evaluated by their usefulness in relation to technology, has ancient roots, inherited from an economic system shaped since the Middle Ages and crystallized in the Industrial Revolution.

The author used historical examples to show how technology was often designed not to liberate, but to subdue human labor. “The assembly line was not created to produce faster, but so that monopoly owners would not need to hire skilled shoemakers. It served to disconnect human beings from the value of the labor they were creating. This is basic Marx.”

Another emblematic case, according to him, is that of the “dumb waiter,” a small elevator used in the 1800s in American mansions to transport food from the kitchen to the main floor. “The ‘dumb waiter’ was not there to spare the servants the labor, but to spare the master and his guests the indignity of seeing an enslaved, sweating person bringing the food. It was to hide human labor.”

In Rushkoff's view, AI repeats this logic: it doesn't eliminate undignified, often servitude-like, labor; it only pushes it further away. Whether in the cobalt mines of Africa or the thousands of invisible workers training language models.

The early days of the internet and lost psychedelia...The author also recalled the 1990s, when he personally believed the internet could pave the way for a creative renaissance. "Digital technology seemed to liberate the collective human imagination. My friends would program at Intel during the day and stay up at night using peyote and DMT, generating fractals to show at rave parties. We'd create shareware and distribute it for free, just for the pleasure of seeing someone use it."

He recounted introducing the internet to Timothy Leary, the guru of the psychedelic counterculture of the 1960s. "He looked at it and said, 'This is more powerful than acid.'" But Leary always said: the quality of the trip depends on the set and the environment, the mindset, and the environment in which you use the substance. We started the internet with the set and the setting of the collective imagination. Today, the set and the setting are surveillance and Wall Street. No wonder we're having a bad trip.”

From Autotune to the standardization of life...To illustrate how technological standardization can deflate creativity, Rushkoff turned to music. “Autotune makes sense for Ariana Grande. She's a commercial product, and standardizing notes helps sell more records. But when you 'autotune' James Brown, you take away the very thing that made him unique: the act of finding the right note. We literally take the soul out of music.”

According to him, the same thing happens when we use digital technology to align human behavior with statistical expectations: unpredictability—which is where life lives—disappears.

Brazil as a space for reinvention...Amidst the criticism, Rushkoff emphasized that Brazil can play a unique role in this scenario.

“In the early days, Brazilians asked me how they could be more like the US. Now, they ask me how to avoid becoming like the US. You have more experience challenging the probable. Limits breed creativity. The work now is to shift this digital moment from utilitarian exploitation to sacred connection.”

For him, this change depends not only on policies or large corporations, but on everyday gestures of collaboration that can expand into new forms of economics. It was from there that he told a personal story, used as a metaphor for this other model of society.

The parable of his daughter's photo: collaboration as an alternative...The episode occurred when his daughter graduated from high school and he wanted to hang her graduation photo on the wall at home. He discovered that, because it was a drywall wall, he would need a drill. His first reaction was to consider buying a new one, which is a typical consumer reflex.

But then came the reasoning: why not borrow it from neighbor Bob, who already had tools at home? “If I knock on Bob’s door and ask for his drill, he’ll probably not only lend it to me but also come along, drill the hole, fix the frame, and plaster the wall. And suddenly he’s at my daughter’s barbecue to celebrate her graduation. Soon, the other neighbors join in too. Little by little, we become an interdependent community.”

According to him, this reasoning was met with suspicion at a technology conference. “I told this story, and someone stood up and said, ‘But what about the drill company?’ As if the problem were that collaboration could undermine the business model of those who profit from each household buying their own tool.”

It was at this point that Rushkoff introduced his harshest critique: defending the drill company isn’t just a matter of business, but of how we structure people’s livelihoods. “What about the elderly lady who depends on dividends from the drill company’s stock? What if we overturn this system?” they asked me.

His answer was direct: “If we live in a civilization where an elderly woman has to depend on stock dividends from a drilling company to survive, instead of the community of people who live with her, we’re doomed from the start.”

Making things weird…As he concluded his talk, Rushkoff revisited one of the concepts that has been with him since the beginning of his career: the power of weirdness. For him, only “weird people”—artists, outsiders, nonconformists—have the courage to question assumptions and break new ground.

“Moments of oscillation mean that power relations can shift. And we weird people feel good when that happens. My message to you is: make things weird so weird people can make things okay.”

Rushkoff argued that “staying weird” is more than an aesthetic attitude: it’s a survival strategy in a system that tries to level everything to the average. It is in unpredictability, he says, that life pulses: and it is there that societies can find alternatives to technological determinism.

mundophone