'A.D.D.' Writer Douglas Rushkoff Discusses What to Take Away From His Book

Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff is a member of the cyberpunk movement and was an associate of the late Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson. He also wrote three "Frontline" TV documentaries. His most recent work, "A.D.D.: Adolescent Demo Division," centers on the world's luckiest teen gamers. Raised from birth to test media, appear on reality TV and enjoy the fruits of corporate culture, the squad develop special abilities that make them the envy of the world - and a grave concern to their keepers. One by one, they "graduate" to new levels that are not what they seem. I had the opportunity to interview Rushkoff when he was promoting the book.

Name a problem you see with society today.

Monsters are parents, too. It's really interesting. I know people that run the marketing departments at bad agencies who send their kids to private schools and don't let them watch any TV. It's because they're making the commercials for everyone else's kids. There's a problem with that. If you don't want your own kids to see it, then you really shouldn't be making it for other people's kids. It's an ethical standpoint which we're not supposed to have anymore. I think that's sort of over (laughing).

I [think] the salvation of our economy would be actually educating people. Teaching us how to create value and create meaning for one another in real ways. I look at it as a win-win. It's really hard as parents. There's just so little time and everything else. [We need to] somehow provide an alternative to that hermetically sealed shopping mall environment that so many kids live in today. I watch my daughter go from the television to the Barbies to the store. It's like it's almost as if they live in this tunnel of media and product. It's really hard for them to get a sense of anything outside that closed world. That's what the ADD [kids] is supposed to be a kind of metaphor for [in the book]. The closed environment in which kids live. They're either on a screen or on a bus going from one corporate environment to another.

What do you want people to take away from the book?

I see it more as a story than a polemic. What I want people taking away from it is the experience of having gone through this world with these people. The ideas and all are the starting place but it's not a non-fiction book. It's about trying to retain our humanity as we move into increasingly technologized and corporatized environments. What does it mean to be a human? Are we changing?

I want younger people especially thinking about themselves as "new types." [Those are the] kind of characters from anime and manga. The kids like in "Akira" who develop telepathy, the ability to operate Gundam robots from a distance, and the ability to see through things. I want people to start considering whether we're developing "new type" attributes. What are the things we can do that our parents couldn't do? How is our technology changing us? What are the new human potentials that are arising out of all of this and how do we seize them?

[We also need to] acknowledge that it hurts to change. In some ways we're unrecognizable. It's difficult to be intimate. It's calling attention to these kinds of things as far as conversations go. It's hard for people to look at each other in the eyes these days. We've lost a lot of our abilities to do nonverbal communication because of the amount of time we spend online.

For more articles by Eric Shirey, check out:

'A.D.D.: Adolescent Demo Division' Graphic Novel Review
'Batman: The Dark Knight, Volume 1: Golden Dawn: Deluxe Edition' Review
'American Vampire Volume 3' Graphic Novel Review

Eric Shirey is the founder and editor of Rondo Award nominated movie and comic book news websites MovieGeekFeed.com and TheSpectralRealm.com. His work has been featured on Yahoo!, DC Comics, StarWars.com, and other national entertainment websites. Besides his three decades long obsession with everything sci-fi, horror, and fantasy related in TV and movies, Eric has what some would call an unhealthy love for comic books. This has led him to interviewing and covering legendary writers and artists in the medium like Geoff Johns, Scott Snyder, Steve Niles, Bernie Wrightson, and Howard Chaykin.