@JaredAbrahamWSU
Social, Fact, Openness and Purpose are the last four commands in Douglas Rushkoff’s Program or be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age. These last four commands are Rushkoff’s attempt to convince you to be involved with the wonderful world of technology. Rushkoff describes the social command as “the ongoing coevolution between people and technologies.” (p.90)and that “the bias of digital media is toward contact with other people”(p.90)
The idea behind Fact, is that the truth will always prevail. Rushkoff states if you “Put something false online”. . .” it will eventually be revealed as a lie.”(p.100) Just like in real life we must be very careful and deliberate about what we post online. Unlike lying in the physical world the lie that you put on the internet will be on the internet forever.
With Openness, Rushkoff believes that “Digital networks were built for the purpose of sharing computing resources by people who were themselves sharing resources, technologies, and credit in order to create it.”(p.112) According to Rushkoff, we also “often exploit the openness of others,” and we must learn to promote openness. And that openness refers to sharing, not stealing.
All digital technology must exist in a programmers mind before it can be created for the world to see. In In the last chapter, Purpose, Rushkoff says that, “we must learn how to make the software, or risk becoming the software.”(p.128) What he is saying is that if we don’t know how to develop this new technology, we might as well let someone else run our life.