Douglas Rushkoff was mugged outside his apartment on Christmas Eve, but when he posted a friendly warning on his community website, the responses castigated him for potentially harming the local real-estate market. When did these corporate values overtake civic responsibilites?

Rushkoff examines how corporatism has become an intrinsic part of our everyday lives, choices and opinions. He demonstrates how this system created a world where everything can be commodified, where communities have dissolved into consumer groups, where fiction and reality have become fundamentally blurred. And, with this system on the verge of collapse, Rushkoff shows how the simple pleasures that make us human can also point the way to freedom.

Douglas Rushkoff has written ten books on new media and popular culture includingCyberia,Media Virus,Playing the Future,Nothing Sacred: The Truth about JudaismandCoercion. He has also written and presented two documentaries,The Merchants of CoolandThe Persuaders. Between 1996 and 2001 he wrote a column on interactive culture for theNew York Timesand theGuardian. Previous jobs have included certified stage fight choreographer and keyboardist for the band Psychic TV. He lives in New York.

A timely, provocative and urgent look at how our world has become slowly but surely corporatised.