Rating: 
Summary: Why we buy?
Review: I was wondering why I bought this tape. Well, it was because Walgreen's had a bunch of bargain tapes prominently featured in their store, and the music playing had a subliminal message that said buy me. Seriously, Rushkoff does a good job of detailing how people are influenced to buy a product, subscribe to a belief, or follow a messianic leader.
I think Rushkoff is suspious of all people or companies trying to sell a product. However, in most cases, he details how Western style societies have been influenced by consumerism, and how companies have refined their selling habits to sell their services and products. Rushkoff does not just stop at the selling of products. He talks about why people join and stay in cults, why people follow political leaders, the effects of the worldwide web and internet on people, and pyramid schemes. In modern marketing, as well as these, people are coerced in subscribing to alien beliefs or products. This is why people need to understand these principles in order to avoid the damage of coercion on their person.
The book is relatively interesting. A good book for those interested in the decision making process of the Western consumer.
Rating:
Summary: Why we buy?
Review: I was wondering why I bought this tape. Well, it was because Walgreen's had a bunch of bargain tapes prominently featured in their store, and the music playing had a subliminal message that said buy me. Seriously, Rushkoff does a good job of detailing how people are influenced to buy a product, subscribe to a belief, or follow a messianic leader.
I think Rushkoff is suspious of all people or companies trying to sell a product. However, in most cases, he details how Western style societies have been influenced by consumerism, and how companies have refined their selling habits to sell their services and products. Rushkoff does not just stop at the selling of products. He talks about why people join and stay in cults, why people follow political leaders, the effects of the worldwide web and internet on people, and pyramid schemes. In modern marketing, as well as these, people are coerced in subscribing to alien beliefs or products. This is why people need to understand these principles in order to avoid the damage of coercion on their person.
The book is relatively interesting. A good book for those interested in the decision making process of the Western consumer.
Rating:
Summary: Dectructing the Media Ecology
Review: If you've never read anything about the psychology and dynamics of persuasion or coercion, then this will book will open your eyes to this field. Rushkoff asserts that everything is coercive or persuasive in some manner. (Most people view the former as having a stronger connotation.) He deconstructs such areas as advertising, atmospherics (e.g., layout of a store), public relations, and the psychology of hand-to-hand coercion (e.g., mirror consumer's behavior = better rapport = more likely to buy). Basically, Rushkoff provides numerous examples in each category of how individuals and organizations take advantage of the psychology of human beings. For example, we are more easily persuaded if we regress to when we were younger (and more susceptible to appeals to authority), transfer our feelings to an authority, or listen to certain music or smell certain smells (e.g., bake bread when trying to sell your home). All told, this book will help the reader to better deconstruct the capitalistic environment that is built on persuasion or coercion of some sort. I also recommend the "Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini. Read Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" for a trenchant analysis of the rise of television (and its iatrogenic effects).
Rating: 
Summary: Just Read It
Review: In most countries, most eras of history, this book would have been suppressed by government or commercial forces. Owning it and reading it are empowering acts. It is a wonderful resource for culture jammers and anyone who struggles to attain freedom of mind. Read it. Twice.
Rating:
Summary: Douglas Rushkoff is a Double Agent
Review: In the early 90's Douglas Rushkoff wrote a book titled "Media Virus." It described how the Internet Age would render marketing usless. Unfortunately, this book was studied by marketers to develo new and more effective strategies to sell to us. More frightening and more transparent than before. His book was so successful that he was invited inside "their" world to work on marketing strategies. This book, then, is his report back to us. His descriptions of how "they" turn "us" into mindless consumers is scary. Some examples are: The Muzak that's pumped into every store in the world is secretly timed to influence our moods and emotions and most importantly, our buying patterns. Ever wonder why so many stores have buying frenzies followed by periods of no activity? Well this is it. The music, no matter what genre, is designed to bring us to a fevered pitch of buying where we grab whatever it is we have and get on line. Every sales associate in The Gap is trained in "in with two out with five." This means that if you walk in with 2 items, they want to recommend 5 other items for you to buy, and they always tell you you look good in them. And Mall Designs. The first mall was designed by Victor Gruen in 1958 as a new version of Downtown. They're designed in very specific ways to do very specific things to us. They're designed to disorient us, make us confused. That's why you can't see one department store from another department store. The more confused we are, the more likely we are to become mindless buying zombies. This is called the Gruen Transfer. So what about stores like Ikea, where so-called educated consumers to go a warehouse like environment and get their own products from the stock shelves? Well, this too is designed to turn us into mindless buying zombies, but in a different way. None of us can decipher what those little tags mean, and there's nobody to help us. So we become like helpless children, confused and, again, mindless buying zombies. Another technique is to convince you it's a scary world out there, but we know the way to safety. Conspiracy theorists love this type of talk, but so does AOL and Microsoft. "So easy to use no wonder it's #1." Another technique is to convince you that you're defenseless against their marketing techniques... Yet that's exactly what this book does. Sure it introduces you to all of these various techniques, but it also convinces you that it's hard to defend yourself against them. So you give up. Douglas Rushkoff describes the technique used to turn thinking people into mindless consumers flawlessly. I won't give away the core of the book, but the methods described here are clearer and more concice than any others I've seen. Interestingly, Douglas Rushkoff wrote a book in the early 90's that was adopted wildly by marketing professionals, and he spent time with them. He tells us he pities for their hearless behaviour and their pangs of guilt. Now, he writes another book with nearly the same purpose, but yet again tells us it's for our own good. As Robert Cialdini describes, persuasive techniques are distorted versions of the same mechnasms that bind a society together. If you give a gift to your friend, your friend will want to return the favor, it helps build your friendship. But when these techniques are used in a perscribed manner designed to produce a specific result, they're dirtied. According to Ruskoff, people who work at The Gap have a harder time forming real relationships because they've been inundated in these techniques. Where is this exit he promises us. How do we escape the media's grip on us? It seems that what "they" say is true, the more well educated you are, the easier you become to market to. Buried in the epilogue in the last paragraph of two he quickly promises a vague way to redeem yourself (again leaving you open to attack: the vague promise is another coercive technique). In summation, this is the single most cohesive and coherent book I've read on the subject (not that I've read that many) of coercion and marketing. It's very dangerous and I almost don't want to reccomend it so it's powers will never be used against me (and these kinds of things can only be used against you). Reccomended Reading: Influence by Robert Cialdini The One to One Future by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers. Permission Marketing by Seth Godin Why We Buy by Paco Underhill The Frontline TV special "The Merchants of Cool" by Douglas Rushkoff
Rating:
Summary: Now they will have to find new ways of grinding you down
Review: In this day & age , it would seem that any method of persuasion is not taboo. Mr Rushkoff provides some very damning evidence that Corporations do indeed call all the shots & as a result the rabble are willing to play ball. It doesnt matter whether youre an occasional consumer or someone who tries to reject their subliminal brainwashing , they will find a way of finding your weaknesses & manipulating you into their way of thinking. Scary stuff , but Mr Rushkoff persuades us :) that there is indeed a glimmer of hope , if we want it.
Rating:
Summary: Must Read
Review: Let's put it this way, if you have any interest at all in understanding how you are constantly being manipulated and controlled by the media and countless other forms of predatory vermin, you MUST read this book. Actually, even if you don't care, you MUST read this book anyway.
Rating:
Summary: Here is the book I've been looking for for the past 10 years
Review: Mr Rushkoff is not a pessimist, we are merely used to looking at the world through rose colored cathode ray tubes. Mr. Rushkoff is not a conspiracy theorist, he admits that much of the time our coercers are unaware of their own behavior. It is the system itself which is coercive. It is the buisness of the book to tell you how, not that you might join, or donate, or buy from Douglas Rushkov, (get the book at the library if you like.) but so that when you do act you understand first how you have been acted upon. If that is not the most important information any one can give you at the end of the 20th century, I don't know what is.
Rating:
Summary: Very Funny as you read these reviews...
Review: Reading several of these reviews by obviously SMART people makes me laugh. The way I see things is they read "Coercion" and found out how they have been manipulated and controled without their knowlege! LOL..! "I'm too educated/intelligent to be fooled by low life persuation engineers." At the end of the first chapter (nobodys written about that) they realize he really did get to them. So goes the rest of the book. Don't worry, we're only human.
Rating:
Summary: A must-read for anyone working in or around the Internet.
Review: Rushkoff does an amazing job of explaining the evolution of the Internet into a commercial medium for better or worse. COERCION details the techniques used to minipulate us, and how they relate to the "new" medium. If you work in the Internet industry this book is essential reading, if you are thinking of getting involved in the Internet industry start here.
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