Time Ain T Money Rhetorical Analysis

Throughout the manifesto, “Time Ain’t Money”, by Douglas Rushkoff, deliberately creates a persona that is straightforward to address the views of CEO’s, and how they run their companies. Rushkoff designed this essay with specific sections intentional written in a certain order to communicate his message clearly. Throughout these ideas Rushkoff creates a key term to further express his idea. In the essay, Rushkoff uses a word, “presentism”, which he made up to describe the process of how, “society is focused on the now over the past, and even the future” (Rushkoff 114). In the essay, “Time Ain’t Money”, Rushkoff uses examples to show presentisms authority on culture change. Rushkoff uses examples of presentism to show authority on culture change.

“Good CEO’s reading this…” (Rushkoff 115). This is interesting because up to this point Rushkoff has eased into the demands he wants and now just takes down the CEO’s telling them they are not a good CEO if they didn’t make the connections of presentism and our culture. Rushkoff brings the CEO’s down to earth and plainly tells them they are not doing as good as a job as they think they are. This is where Rushkoff forces his audience to act. Rushkoff makes them anxious and stressed and then hits them with reality, in which they need to change along with culture. This is important to Rushkoff because he knows that if CEO’S don’t listen to him there business will ultimately become obsolete. Rushkoff ties money and currency back to clocks, “so money had a clock inside it. Any money borrowed would have to be paid back in a certain amount of time, plus dividends” (Rushkoff 117). Money has a clock tethered to it, and our current economic system was created in the middle ages, around the same time as the clock. I think Rushkoff is hinting to CEO’S that the country’s current economic system is out dated and needs to change for the betterment of society and there businesses.

Rushkoff hits the climax of his manifesto, at this point he give suggestions to the CEO’s reading his essay. Rushkoff uses soda companies as an example of presentism. “Less like Coke with its connection to legacy and advertising, more like Pepsi with its focus on social media and the now” (Rushkoff 118). Businesses in the digital age need to realize that money is a resource that promotes your enterprise. Society is in the “now” stage, and CEO’s should take after Pepsi and look for ways to increase demand through social media, while being humble to the employees of their own