'A.D.D.' Writer Douglas Rushkoff Shares Influences of 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 a group of teen gamers raised from birth to test media, appear on reality TV and enjoy the rewards of corporate culture. They develop special abilities that raise them to celebrity status but seriously concerns their custodians. As they grow older and more powerful, the individuals are sent to the mysterious "next level." I had the opportunity to interview Rushkoff when he was promoting the book.

I see some obvious influences in the book. There's "A Clockwork Orange," "Logan's Run," and "The Island." Can you name some of the other influences for the book?

The one you didn't get is "Never Let Me Go." It was a book before it was a movie. It's a book about these children who are raised basically from birth. They're clones of people that they're going to use for organ harvesting later. They're clones and they have this sort of internal world that they live in and this acceptance of their different roles.

I kind of liked that and the emotional through line of that book really had an impact on me. There was sort of a love story in the midst of this strange thing [in that book].

The other was the movie "Taps." It has Timothy Hutton, Sean Penn, and Tom Cruise. They're all in this military high school that's run by George C. Scott. George C. Scott gets killed or something. I forgot how. The kids decide to defend the school against the National Guard. I always loved that movie. The end of [my book] was sort of my homage to that. The kids are defending their facility against the encroaching guards.

"A Clockwork Orange" [is] definitely [an influence]. [My book shows] how that kind of violence is actually virtualized so they can do it. They can actually kind of be that crazy. I wanted them to have their own language to really show that they're in this different world. They don't just have different perceptions of our world. They have these kinds of abilities that they name because they don't really exist in our world. You read the text or listen to people when they're playing World of Warcraft and there's another language that develops.

Is there a solution to the problem or are we doomed?

One way would be to teach programming. I don't like the idea of people being raised in an environment that they have no knowledge of how it's put together. What happens is they accept the environment at face value.

Kids shouldn't be using Facebook unless they know what Facebook's for. Most kids think Facebook is there to help them make friends and it's not. Facebook is there to deliver their social graph for money to corporations. Unless you understand what the environment you're using is for, it's very hard to be the user as opposed to being the used. [We need] to teach programming. [We need] start in fourth grade after long division and teach kids how to do a basic algorithm. Teach them the language [and] the operating principle of the world in which they're spending so much of their time.

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.