By Douglas Rushkoff Published June 4, 2009 12:02 a.m.
“As the financial institutions we have come to rely on appear to topple under their own weight, it's only natural that we rush to support them. These are the banks, investment groups, and insurance firms to which we have outsourced our savings, financing, and investing. They fund our businesses and lend most of our currency into existence. Were we just a bit more aware of how this dependency developed, however, as well as what it costs us in the long run, we might choose instead to exploit their temporary vulnerability toward very different ends. Indeed, if we had our wits about us, we would seek to put our biggest banks out of our misery, for good.”
About Douglas Rushkoff | Winner of the first Neil Postman award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity, Douglas Rushkoff has written a dozen best-selling books on media and society, including Cyberia, Media Virus, Coercion (winner of the Marshall McLuhan Award), Get Back in the Box, and Life Inc. He made the PBS “Frontline” documentaries Digital Nation, The Persuaders, and Merchants of Cool. A columnist for The Daily Beast, his articles appear regularly in The New York Times and Discover, among many other publications. His radio commentaries air on NPR and WFMU, and he is a familiar face on television from ABC News to The Colbert Report. Rushkoff has taught at New York University and the New School, played keyboards for the industrial band PsychicTV, directed for theater and film, and worked as a stage fight choreographer.
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