Exit Strategy

Douglas Rushkoff's latest salvo on complacent media culture, set in 2008, features Jamie Cohen, a young hacker who, like the biblical Joseph, suffers betrayal and then penance (via the talk-show circuit) before joining forces with a venture capitalist determined to turn everyone into mindless consumers. Meanwhile, Jamie's former pals have developed a way to kill the Web's - and the stock market's - profit-making capacities. A dazzling satire of 1990s dot-com mania, this McLuhanesque cultural critique establishes a new publishing precedent: it is the first "open-source" ebook, annotated by online readers. This first print edition includes the best of their footnotes chosen by the author.

Douglas Rushkoff is a professor of virtual culture at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program.