Life Inc Becomes NBC Today Show Series

Life Inc is being made into a series for the NBC Today show called Life Inc: The Economy and You. Unfortunately for me, it's not based on my book Life Inc, about the rise of corporatism and the way corporate logic replaces human and community values, but on their own idea for a series on the rise of corporatism and the way people can learn to play the game, too. (Thus, the banner ads for sponsor and personal finance guru Suze Ormond). Oh well. Serves me right for employing such a standard (and overused) construction for the title of a book. Luckily for me, however, the Life Inc. series will still be running for the January 1, 2011 paperback release of Life Inc: How corporatism conquered the world and how to take it back - which has been expanded by a third to include a resource guide on how to take back our world. In there, I've got essays from people and organizations who are modeling some great post-corporate strategies for creating and exchanging value. They include Freecycle, LocalHarvest, Streetsblog, CableCar Cinema of Providence, Kiva, Metacurrency, Four Corners Exchange, a babysitting co-op, a biodiesel collective, and more. With any luck, a few people looking for a get-rich scheme will buy my book by mistake, and get a some good ideas for getting rich slowly and sustainably, instead.

Winner of the Media Ecology Association's first Neil Postman award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity, Douglas Rushkoff is an author, teacher, and documentarian who focuses on the ways people, cultures, and institutions create, share, and influence each other's values. He is technology and media commentator for CNN, and has taught and lectured around the world about media, technology, culture and economics. His new book, Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age, a followup to his Frontline documentary, Digital Nation. His last book, an analysis of the corporate spectacle called Life Inc., was also made into a short, award-winning film.

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PaamayimNekudotayim

@anon #3 True story, I started the system of putting your zipcode in the subject line when giving things away on Freecycle (at least in New York.) Some years later I managed to send an offer off without a zip in the subject line. The control freak reply I got from a list mod was so off-putting I had to find a smarter place to give stuff away.

If Douglas is basing the hopes and dreams of the anti-corporatist movement on Freecyle and its like the world is in a lot more trouble than I had imagined.
dculberson

Oooh, so you’re not going to go at them with both lawsuit barrels blazing? Way to set a good example, man! :-)
Anonymous

$10 they go at you with both lawsuit barrels blazing when they learn about your book…
Anon, he must

Freecycle, LOL. Freecycle is OK, I’ve been in a number of lists for a while, but for the most part it is nothing more than a way for lazy people to get other people to come take away their trash, and for control freaks to go on psychotic rants when someone posts to THEIR list with a comma in the wrong place. If it keeps crazy people off the streets, then I guess it’s OK.
pato pal ur

That title and visual was a shock to see! And then, disappointment when I read the post :(

Looking forward to the expanded paperback. Ideas to change things were what I felt was mostly missing from the Life Inc. hardback.