Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies News

You’re invited: talk by Douglas Rushkoff about the biases of digital media

January 29th, 2025

Purdue Libraries invites you to attend a talk by Douglas Rushkoff, author and documentarian who studies human autonomy in a digital age, on Thursday, February 20, 5:15–6:15 PM in WALC 1132. The talk is titled “Program or Be Programmed: The Biases of Digital Media” and will be hosted by Libraries faculty member Melissa Chomintra and co-sponsored by Purdue University’s Tech Justice Lab.

About the talk

We continue to accept new technologies into our lives with little or no understanding of how these devices work and work on us. We do not know how to program our computers, nor do we care. We spend much more time and energy trying to figure out how to use them to program one another, instead—this is a potentially grave mistake. 

Just as the invention of text utterly transformed human society, disconnecting us from much of what we held sacred, our migration to the digital realm will also require a new template for maintaining our humanity. In this talk, Rushkoff shares the biases of digital media, and what that means for how we should use them. 

About Douglas Rushkoff

Douglas Rushkoff, named one of MIT’s “world’s ten most influential intellectuals,” is an author, documentarian, and expert on digital age autonomy. His twenty books include “Survival of the Richest” and “Team Human,” and he has produced PBS Frontline documentaries like “Generation Like” and “The Persuaders.” Rushkoff has coined terms such as “viral media” and “social currency” and advocates for using digital media for social justice. A professor at CUNY/Queens and research fellow at the Institute for the Future, he is also a columnist for Medium, with his novels and comics in development for film.

Visit Rushkoff’s website to learn more about him and his work.