As all media becomes a landscape in which interaction takes place, and literacy is the ability to participate consciously in this environment, the convergence of media networks becomes ever more important in how we consume, produce, and analyze content.
Best-selling author, documentarian, and cultural commentator Douglas Rushkoff is one of the foremost analysts of how people, cultures, and institutions create, share, and influence each other?s values. In this conversation, he examines how one of his futuristic predictions from the 1990s, Contact is King, has manifested itself in becoming a mantra for an all-pervasive communications paradigm for today’s society.
Author of such works as Cyberia, Media Virus, Playing the Future, and the just-completed Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out, Rushkoff has written and hosted two award-winning PBS Frontline specials, The Merchants of Cool (how corporations influence youth culture) and The Persuaders (how the cluttered landscape of marketing makes efforts to overcome consumer resistance).
He regularly appears on TV shows from NBC Nightly News to CNN?s Larry King Live and HBO?s Realtime with Bill Maher. His commentaries are seen and heard on CBS Sunday Morning and on NPR. He is writing a new monthly comic book for Vertigo, and he developed the Electronic Oracle software series for HarperCollins Interactive.
Rushkoff founded the Narrative Lab at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, and lectures about media, art, society, and change at conferences and universities around the world.
Moderated by Chris Pfaff, President, Chris Pfaff Tech/Media LLC; board delegate, PGA New Media Council
A board delegate of the PGA New Media Council since 2006, and a PGA NMC member since 2004, Chris Pfaff leads a consultancy ? Chris Pfaff Tech/Media LLC ? that represents some of the leading service providers, audio/video technology firms, networking vendors, and media companies in the world, from PRIMEDIA and Eastman Kodak to Cantor Telecom. A veteran of the venture world, Chris helped launch more than 20 ventures from the Lucent New Ventures Group, including iBiquity Digital; Flarion; Lucent Digital Video, and GeoVideo Networks, among others. In addition, he has helped launch AT&T?s Internet strategy; the Viacom New Media division of Viacom, Inc.; Sony Electronics? Digital Betacam format, and Sharp Electronics? LCD product division.
