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Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back
 
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Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back (Hardcover)

by Douglas Rushkoff (Author)
3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 304 pages
  • Publisher: Random House (2 Jun 2009)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1400066891
  • ISBN-13: 978-1400066896
  • Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 15.5 x 3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 1,250,898 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Product Description

'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. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.


From the Back Cover

‘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. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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3.4 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Long overdue, 13 Jul 2009
By N. Wistreich "Nicol" (Glasgow, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back: How We Traded Meaning for Markets, Society for Self-interest, and Citizenship for Customer Service (Paperback)
The first point to note is that Rushkoff isn't attacking money or trade in itself: "Commerce is good" he says, "Corporatism is something else entirely". Tracing corporations back to the monarchy, and showing them as an extension of the same power-hungry, oft-corrupt idealogoy, Rushkoff explores the same territory as Joel Bakan's The Corporation and the Yes Men's stunts and films. But it's a vital and urgent issue: how centuries of corporate influence have turned us into a world of "isolated, individualistic people pitted against each other" at a time when cooperation is more urgently needed than ever.

It seems a vital debate as the big three problems of the modern world - poverty (and related conflicts), global warming and lifestyle/mental health problems, are linked in a vicious circle supported by corporations so massive and far removed from their original purpose as to have forgotten making money is far less important than (and often inversely related to) wellbeing and survival. Lives of unfulfilling, unproductive work that we don't believe in making us miserable, forcing us to buy more stuff we don't need made by cheap, exploited foreign labour, in turn using up valuable resources and bringing the planet closer to enviro-catastrophe. It's a circle where no-one benefits other than a few large shareholders, and even they are endangering their own heirs - a non-Darwinian illogicality.

As is often the case, the problems seem to be spelled out here in far more detail than the solutions, but there is the general argument in favour of the group over the individual, interdependence, collective action as well as small scale thinking and personal life changes. There is, however, a strong warning against 'branded movements', the corporate/institutional solution and Bono-esque save-the-world "ego trips" that "are the artifacts of the strident individualism we were taught to embrace".

Essential reading, even if you don't agree with everything within it.
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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars good read, 17 Jul 2009
By Michael Davey (Leytonstone) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back: How We Traded Meaning for Markets, Society for Self-interest, and Citizenship for Customer Service (Paperback)
the book identifies the problems with our current world and the way most of us participate in it however the authors solutions are weak to say the least.
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3 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars This should have been good., 6 Jul 2009
By Peter Haydon "Priapus" (London, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back: How We Traded Meaning for Markets, Society for Self-interest, and Citizenship for Customer Service (Paperback)
Let me start by saying that it would have been better to have been able to review the whole book. Sadly I couldn't read the whole book for the simple reason that it's dire. From an intriguing introduction, which shows us the kernel of a good idea, the book rapidly deteriorates to a woeful level of wannabe pseudo-intellectualism that wouldn't get a Grade D at school. Most people who know nothing about a subject are smart enough not to bang on about it. Mr Rushkoff is not quite smart enough to avoid demonstrating his complete ignorance of economic history for page after page. This is a pity because it renders his whole hypothesis nonsense; the reason I felt it unnecessary to finish the book. He is probably therefore not quite well read enough to know what 'post hoc propter ergo hoc' means. You, dear review reader, know that it is a form of logical fallacy. It is a particular type of logical fallacy to which Mr Rushkoff is particularly wedded, for the first three chapters of this book are merely fallacy piled on non sequitur. I was aware that there are plenty of publishers lazy enough to publish this sort of sub-academic nonsense. I wasn't aware that the Bodley Head was one of them.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars great but scarry
A very clear insight into why we live the way we do and how we are manipulated to ensure the march of the corporate monopolies. This book will defiantly make you think.
Published 1 month ago by Ben Ruddle

4.0 out of 5 stars Great perspectives
Douglas Rushkoff delivers a great analysis and perspectives on how we all have embodyied and become slaves of the corporate mindset. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Sofus Midtgård Hansen

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