Name: How the Internet Went From Counterculture to Technofeudalism | Douglas Rushkoff
Uploaded: 2025-10-01T14:35:00+00:00
Duration: 56 min 58 s
Description: In Episode 439 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Douglas Rushkoff, a pioneering media theorist, best-selling author, and leading voice on how digital technologies shape societies, economie

2 days ago

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In Episode 439 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Douglas Rushkoff, a pioneering media theorist, best-selling author, and leading voice on how digital technologies shape societies, economies, and cultures.
Rushkoff and Kofinas spend the first hour of their conversation tracing the arc of Douglas’ career, from his upbringing in a communal 1960s neighborhood in Queens and early work in theater to his role as a cultural and media critic chronicling the rise of the early internet. They explore how the internet’s rave-like collaborative ethos and anarchic counterculture gradually gave way in the 1990s and early 2000s to a highly centralized, commercialized, and impersonal platform for economic and political consolidation and control.
The second hour turns to a conversation about consequences and remedies for our increasingly disembodied and highly intermediated world—with its blurring of public and private spaces, its hyperreality and epistemic dislocation, and its noticeable drift toward techno-feudalism and digital pacification.
We examine ways to rebuild sovereignty over our communities and how to reclaim our attention, reaffirm our relationships, and reassert our power as citizens over our governments and the large-scale commercial and technological forces shaping our lives.

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00:00 Introduction
04:06 Douglas Rushkoff's Career Journey
06:57 Theater and Media Theory
08:14 Early Internet Culture and Media Theory
17:25 The Evolution of Digital Tools
20:41 The Commercialization of the Internet
30:21 The Shift in Silicon Valley
31:14 The Rise of Mobile and Social Media
31:38 The Internet's Business Pivot
32:03 The Netscape IPO and Its Implications
34:56 Industrial Age Capitalism vs. Digital Age Capitalism
36:17 The Evolution of Value Extraction
38:32 The Loss of Physical Connection
43:36 The Fascist Atmosphere
45:10 Media Environments and Political Systems
47:48 The Digital Media Environment
49:07 The Dichotomy of Left and Right Brain
54:06 Topics for the Second Hour