Children of Chaos: Surviving the End of the World as We Know It

Our world is getting more complex every day. Faced by a media run amok, a rapidly expanding global economy, the collapse of national and social boundaries and the profound impact of technology on our lives, we all feel like immigrants to a very new territory. Gone is the predictability of an organized civilization, overwhelmed by a seemingly random wave of change. Like any new immigrants to an unfamiliar culture, we must look to our children for signs of how to act and think. Natives of chaos, they have already adapted to its demands. Douglas Rushkoff believes that this is the moment we have been wating for - not an apocalypse at all, but a renaissance in which children's culture will lead us through despair and powerlessness to a new sort of hope. In this text he deconstructs the culture of the generation he calls the "screenagers" - from Japanimation and Nintendo to rave and new primitives - in his search for strategies on coping with, and thriving amidst, the discontinuity of the post-modern experience.