On Thursday, October 26 at 4:30 p.m., Douglas Rushkoff, the author of Stockton’s First-Year Common Reader, “Team Human,” took the Performing Arts Center Stage to host the Fall 2023 Convocation Lecture and Q&A. This event was hosted by the First-Year Seminar Program and its coordinator, Geoffrey Gust, Ph.D., as well as Marissa Levy, Ph.D., Dean of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences and interim provost and vice president of Academic Affairs. After discussing his manifesto in their seminar courses, First-Year students were encouraged to attend and hear Rushkoff expand on what it means to be a member of “Team Human,” and how we can do better to restore the rapport society has lost in recent years.

Rushkoff is a professor of media theory and digital economics at Queens/CUNY and MIT named him one of the ten most influential intellectuals in the world. He is a prominent American digital theorist and best-selling author, with his “Team Human” podcast and most recent publication, “Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires,” expressing his beliefs on the positive wonders technology has brought our world, as well as the dangers it poses to division and the growing power of the wealthy.

Prior to Rushkoff entering the stage, Gust spoke on the format of this lecture before handing the podium off to Levy, who gave a brief introduction. She expressed her hopes that students would be able to develop a broader mindset in the discussion of technology’s evolution, and she highlighted the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on “connectedness, civility, and humanity.” She appreciated Rushkoff for being at Stockton, then lent him the stage.

Rushkoff walked out to applause from the students and got the lecture rolling by tossing a couple lollipops into the front rows of the theater. Despite being a large venue where he has the spotlight, Rushkoff made it clear that he wanted this event to be grounded and communicative as a way to reflect his points, all of which revolve around the concept of “real life.” To assist this idea, his speech began with a charming anecdote about asking his neighbor for assistance in hanging a picture. He said that he could’ve simply driven to Home Depot and purchased one, but going to that neighbor lays the groundwork for a relationship. The neighbor could explain how to hang the picture, could be someone Rushkoff gets to know personally, and could be someone that he will invite over again, but for barbecues and parties rather than chores. Yet Rushkoff notes that in today’s corporate-ridden society, where suburbia tends to spawn competition rather than connection, intimate interactions like these are comparable to nightmares. “This is the bad thing, this is the hard part,” Rushkoff expressed when talking of this potential befriending, and the story of the neighbor is one he referred back to throughout his discussion.

One of Rushkoff’s leading points was that money and economics stand in the way of fixing humanity’s connection. Using his metaphor of suburbia and their pristine lawns, he brought up why people are so hesitant to share with one another. “What would happen to the lawn mowing companies?” Rushkoff mused when posing the idea of neighborhoods sharing lawnmowers rather than the people purchasing their own. He talked about society being sculpted to fit the business model, and people living to be employed, though this idea of employment is a relatively new development in our money-obsessed world.

He also used his experience with early computers to further how disconnected we are, as he took the terms “read-only” and “read-write” files to describe a human tendency to be closed-minded and isolated. Rushkoff suggested that we were raised in a “read-only world,” and that one of the benefits of technology is that we can be transformed into a “read-write world.” He suggested that humans can come together to change economics — which he noted was a system created by medieval monarchs — and we can use our ideas to come together in the face of billionaires and conglomerates. “Why does the economy have to grow? Do we need more food for ourselves? What do we need more of? We don’t need more, the money needs more,” Rushkoff said when talking about how the health of our entire economy revolves around bankers continuously getting richer. He used this to explain how in human society, the human often times takes a backseat to money and profit. Rushkoff urged the audience to use technology to quell this growing problem.

However, through humorous impressions of Ariana Grande and James Brown, Rushkoff counteracted this positivity with technology’s ability to manipulate, control, and diminish human passion and emotion. In both this lecture and “Team Human,” he warns society to be careful of giving too much to technology, for our unique soul will be hard to gain back. After all, Rushkoff included the notion that our soul and our emotions are what makes us humans spectacular. He concluded his lecture by saying that all humanity is to the world’s greatest “trolls” is a number. People are data, not humans, and he continues with this topic in relation to education during the Q&A. But before he sat with Gust to answer the student’s questions, he ended on the sentiment of the rich and powerful being afraid of humanity. He spoke of how they are afraid of the political and social polarization they created, and how they want to escape from the technologically advanced reality they developed, all because they know the damage it has done to the people. They see the opposition and the lashing out, and to Rushkoff, that is their nightmare. While ours may be rekindling rapport, theirs is what could result from it.

The final half hour of the event was spent with Gust and Rushkoff sitting on stage, the former asking the latter anonymous questions generated by the students. Common topics included technology’s impact on education — which Rushkoff voiced as a concern for the young, who seem to be born with an iPad glued to their hands — and artificial intelligence. Rushkoff’s issue with A.I. is centered around war, and he said that it is easier than ever for drone strikes and destruction to happen anywhere at any time because of A.I.’s accessibility. On the contrary, he backs A.I. by telling his story of being on CNN, when reporter Jake Tapper questioned what society is to do about the “unemployment problem” if AI takes people’s jobs. “I was feeling, I guess, particularly cheeky,” Rushkoff joked, “and I said, ‘Unemployment problem? What about the unemployment solution?’ I don’t want a job, does anyone want a job?” He then talked about humans only working because the man-made chartered monopoly says they have to, and that in life, people only work because they want things. Rushkoff jested that if AI wants to do the hard work, let it because then people can sit back and chase their aspirations rather than arduous labor.

After the session, attendees were invited to a reception in the L Wing Art Gallery, where food was available and Rushkoff signed students’ copies of “Team Human.” Although it seems as if humanity is broken at the seams, with tragedy gushing out of every crevice, Rushkoff leaves us with the notion that we can repair the fractures caused by an inhumane world. Such tasks can even be started by a simple knock on a neighbor’s door.

If you want to read more about “Team Human” and Douglas Rushkoff, visit his website here.