Team Human

Douglas Rushkoff

Jan 2019 · W. W. Norton & Company

About this ebook

Porchlight’s Management and Workplace Culture Book of The Year

“[A] thoroughly fascinating exploration of the long interplay between power and the technologies of communication.” —Adam Frank, NPR

Team Human is a manifesto—a fiery distillation of preeminent digital theorist Douglas Rushkoff’s most urgent thoughts on civilization and human nature. In one hundred lean and incisive statements, he argues that we are essentially social creatures, and that we achieve our greatest aspirations when we work together—not as individuals. Yet today society is threatened by a vast antihuman infrastructure that undermines our ability to connect. Money, once a means of exchange, is now a means of exploitation; education, conceived as way to elevate the working class, has become another assembly line; and the internet has only further divided us into increasingly atomized and radicalized groups.

Team Human delivers a call to arms. If we are to resist and survive these destructive forces, we must recognize that being human is a team sport. In Rushkoff’s own words: “Being social may be the whole point.” Harnessing wide-ranging research on human evolution, biology, and psychology, Rushkoff shows that when we work together we realize greater happiness, productivity, and peace. If we can find the others who understand this fundamental truth and reassert our humanity—together—we can make the world a better place to be human.

Ratings and reviews

Douglas Rushkoff presents a comprehensive, well researched, albeit repetitive, argument for the social collectivism we desperately need. as we move toward Kurzweil's singularity, it is ever more important that we keep our sights on whats important: our humanity.

Neither techno-utopian nor dystopian, Team Human presents a vision for a future where Humans are enabled, not exploited.

Such a eye opening experience. Ominous yet titillating.

About the author

Douglas Rushkoff is professor of media theory and digital economics at Queens/CUNY. Named one of the world’s ten most influential intellectuals by MIT, he hosts the Team Human podcast and has written many award-winning books, including Media Virus, Program or Be Programmed, and Present Shock. He lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.