Book Review: Get Back in the Box, by Douglas Rushkoff

Latest Book from Reknowned Thinker D. Rushkoff, Gets to the Core of Business

“Eureka”, he’s got it. Author, Culturist, Thinker and now muse of innovators, Douglas Rushkoff has drafted the foundations of a new renaissance at the dawn of a century in need. As much as the language of Rushkoff sparks the Promethean fire within those who think outside the box, his message is clear: Get Back In The Box.

Has the age of consulting in business, government and culture sent us running back to the box we so eagerly wanted out of? Rushkoff has long been a consultant to industries and companies that rely on innovation. He was tuned into a cultural frequency untouched by markets, yet his advice was often taken – but not heeded. Media and tech companies saw he was the guy they needed to talk to in order to reach Generation X, Y, Z. So they listened and read his rooted understanding of how subcultures operate, but skipped the part about how to reach them. An implicit lesson from Rushkoff, in both his earlier writings and his newest, Get Back In the Box, is not to treat the Demos you desire to reach as markets. From a consulting point of view this means you can’t sum up a person or collective of individuals in an hour-long focus group. 

You might have heard a sound bite or been savvy to a quote or two from Rushkoff. Perhaps he grabbed your ear on NPR one afternoon during rush hour or you caught one of his Frontline documentaries¹ on PBS. As much as Rushkoff’s books are perhaps the most provoking and accessible ideas engaged in the media sphere, they brew quietly under the radar, even amongst several bestsellers. Perhaps it is the dynamic of media itself that explains this, as blood, sex and scandals still rule the day. What flows from Rushkoff’s ponderings cannot be sensationalized; he is more one of the decoders of why sensationalism hypnotizes our need for information.