Douglas Rushkoff

Douglas Mark Rushkoff (born February 18, 1961) is an American media theorist, writer, professor, columnist, lecturer, graphic novelist, documentarian and podcaster. He is best known for his association with the early cyberpunk culture, his advocacy of open source solutions to social problems, his critique of technocapitalism, and his call to retrieve our humanity in a digital age. Rushkoff is most frequently regarded as a media theorist and is known for coining terms and concepts including viral media (or media virus), digital native, and social currency. He has written fourteen books on media, technology and culture, as well as several novels and graphic novels. He wrote the first syndicated column on cyberculture for The New York Times Syndicate, as well as regular columns for The Guardian, Arthur, Discover, and the online magazines Daily Beast, and TheFeature. Rushkoff is currently Professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics at the City University of New York, Queens College. He has previously lectured at The New School university in Manhattan and the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where he created the Narrative Lab. He also has taught online for the Maybe Logic Academy. In 2012, Rushkoff was declared the sixth most influential thinker in the world by MIT Technology Review and the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute, following Steven Pinker, David Graeber, Nobel Prize-winner Daniel Kahneman, Thilo Sarrazin, and Richard Florida. On March 9, 2026, Rushkoff announced that he had been confirmed as a permanent member of the Club of Rome.