Life Inc — Douglas Rushkoff

'Something has gone terribly wrong. We are deep in the thrall of a system that no one really likes, no one remembers asking for, yet no one can escape. It just is. And the minute it seems as if we can put our finger on what's happening to us or how it came to be this way, the insight disappears, drowned out by the more immediately pressing demands by everyone and everything on our attention. What did they just say? My phone is vibrating'. In "Life Inc" Douglas Rushkoff offers a timely, provocative and urgent look at the origins and nature of the modern corporate system, a world in which everything can be commodified, a closed system that conquers not through exclusion but total inclusion. Under current conditions market forces have achieved a nightmarish triumph - everything, including dissidence, is assimilated. "Life Inc" tells the story of how we got here and, more importantly, how this value system now perpetuates itself. Rushkoff reveals the process through which media conglomerates conceive and assimilate everything from teen icons to online communities, and replace anything resembling civic engagement with yet another consumer choice. His goal is nothing less than to give us the view from outside of the hermetically sealed shopping mall in which we spend our lives.