Breaking from the Pace of the Net

Digital platforms will keep demanding more content, no matter how much we produce.

Douglas Rushkoff

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Hamster running on wheel. credit: Mylius

Excerpted from a new monologue on Team Human. Here the whole thing here.

I can’t do this anymore.

Oh, I’m happy to write and podcast and teach and talk. That’s me, and that’s all good. What I’m finding difficult, even counter-productive, is to try to keep doing this work at the pace of the Internet.

Podcasting is great fun, and if it were lucrative enough I could probably record and release one or two episodes a week without breaking too much of a sweat. That’s the pace encouraged by both the advertising algorithms and the patronage platforms. Advertisers can more easily bid for spots on a show with a predictable schedule on specified days. Likewise, paying subscribers have come to expect regular content from the podcasts they support. Or at least the platforms encourage a regular rhythm, and embed subtle cues for consistency.

Substack, while great for a lot of things, is even worse as far as its implied demand for near-daily output. If I really wanted to live off a Substack writing career, I would have to ramp up to at least three posts a week. That might work if I were a beat reporter covering sports, but — really — how many cogent ideas about…

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Douglas Rushkoff

Author of Survival of the Richest, Team Human, Program or Be Programmed, and host of the Team Human podcast http://teamhuman.fm