More often than not, I consider myself an enthusiast of the digital revolution. I am a regular Facebook updating, Twitter posting, YouTube watching, StumbleUpon stumbling, blog publishing, internet user. With that being said, I was not instinctively drawn up in arms against Douglas Rushkoff’s argument in Program or Be Programmed. He does brush off the benefits of the digital age, which us as enthusiasts may choose to pinpoint as delusional. However, I found Rushkoff’s topics of forced choice and loss of complexity worth the consideration.

First, I thought about where I stood exactly in the hierarchy, “The people hear while the rabbis read; the people read while those with access to the printing press write; today we write, while our techno-elite programs.” I understand that for each of these instances in our history the access to the newest form of production was and continues to be limited. However, I see a significant difference when it comes to software. We could argue that digital software does not restrict the art of reading and writing but instead can quickly format, link, footnote, and code one’s writing for easy publication. I understand that software can be “written” and there is a specific art to it, but I also see it as a tool much like the printing press, which was able to draw people together for the experience of creativity no matter what end of that experience you happened to be on. Also in the eventual hierarchy, I saw progress leading from the illiterate townspeople to the literate and eventually to the computer savvy. Is he saying that this progression is not as instantaneous as it should be? If we all learn to write software, besides ourselves, who will use it? What’s the next big thing?

I found Rushkoff’s argument–that the digital age forces us to make decisions–quite interesting. He touches upon the discussion we’ve had in class about whether we can simply opt out. He makes dramatic comparisons, as we witnessed by reading his hostage vs. social media scenario, and he declares our perceived “options” to be nothing more than a “marketing ploy.” I had to dig deeper in order to understand exactly where this man was coming from. Whether it’s the color of the trees behind you in your latest family photo-op at the lake or the sound of your favorite artist performing his new single, everything has to be recorded in a set of numbers. The software is designed to make the decision on what html color-id that summertime deciduous tree should recieve (even if it is slightly off) and not every aspect of that voice will be recorded (only the soundbites that the software can record in numeric formation). These decisions have to be made, and they are biased towards a reduction of complexity. Everything is black or white, 1 or 2 etc. On the other hand,  if everyone is using a certain program and you want your work/pictures/music/writing/etc. to be compatible and relevant to others, do you really have the option of choosing different?

By reading Douglas Ruskoff’s piece, I learned more about our digital world than I knew previously. Maybe we all should know how to write software not so that we can all produce it, but so that we can understand how it works, especially since we use it everyday.