I recently read Douglas Rushkoff 's 2010 book, Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age . I first heard of the book at a panel at this year's Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association (PCA/ACA) national conference - one of the presenters mentioned that she used this book for an "Intro to Critical Thinking" course she teaches to college freshmen. It's an interesting choice for that purpose, because Rushkoff isn't so much arguing in this book that people should take on a particularly critical perspective when interacting with the media of a digital age. Instead he's arguing that we should concern ourselves with understanding the way it all works, and that effort to understand will itself engender a critical perspective. Rushkoff uses the term "program" in a very literal sense - his ideal 21st century citizen would absolutely know how to program, and actually, he says, it's not that hard and anyone can learn ho...