36
Feb 2009
AI
bIo enhAnCeD nAno neURo hUMoR FoReVeR YoUng
HaCKinG
tHe eConomy
Douglas Rushkoff
hacking the economy is easier than it looks.
The fi rst step, of course, is to remember that the economy itself is
just a model. It's a way of understanding the world as a series of transactions
made by rational, self-interested beings working to maximize value for
themselves. That's supposedly the given.
of course, it isn't even true. We don't live in an economy. never did.
If we were really all playing some sort of poker game for chips — and making
all the right decisions — then our world might behave like an economy. but
seeing as how we're really more concerned with our moment-to-moment
experience, getting laid, or fi nding a private place to poop, the last thing on
our minds is retention of value over time.
We do live amongst some really big economic actors, though. And the
more we mistake the stage on which they act for the world in which we live,
the less access we have to the script. We end up in the audience, watching the
fi nancial spectacle and — worst of all — mistaking it for real life.
