Team Human with Douglas Rushkoff The Internet Felt Like This in 1994. AI Might Be Our Last Chance.
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Apr 2, 2026 A creator rebuilds his personal website using a local AI in a five hour vibe-coding sprint. The conversation weighs AI's creative promise against its environmental, resource, and labor costs. Listeners hear ideas for peer-to-peer alternatives to platform monopolies and warnings about surveillance projects from powerful tech players.
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DIY Website Built By Claude In Five Hours
- Douglas Rushkoff rebuilt his personal website using Anthropic's Claude in about five hours instead of months.
- He installed Claude locally, fed it a folder of thousands of archived files, and published the result to GitHub at Rushkoff.com.
Weighing Creative Gain Against Hidden Externalities
- Rushkoff frames AI's unseen costs as environmental damage, resource depletion, and labor displacement to weigh against creative gains.
- He set out to test whether the creative output could ever outweigh those extractive impacts.
Actual Token Cost Was Surprisingly Low
- The measurable token cost for Rushkoff's entire Claude session was under $5, suggesting surprisingly low direct monetary energy cost.
- He extrapolated pessimistically and estimated roughly $20 worth of energy even after inflating hidden overheads.