Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
Douglas Rushkoff
Sep 2022 · RB Media · Narrated by Douglas Rushkoff
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4 reviewsreport
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6 hr 22 min
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About this audiobook
The tech elite have a plan to survive the apocalypse: They want to leave us all behind.
Five mysterious billionaires summoned theorist Douglas Rushkoff to a desert resort for a private talk.
The topic? How to survive the “Event”: the societal catastrophe they know is coming. Rushkoff came to understand that these men were under the influence of The Mindset, a Silicon Valley–style certainty that they and their cohort can break the laws of physics, economics, and morality to escape a disaster
of their own making—as long as they have enough money and the right technology.
In Survival of the Richest, Rushkoff traces the origins of The Mindset in science and technology through its current expression in missions to Mars, island bunkers, AI futurism, and the metaverse. In a dozen urgent, electrifying chapters, he confronts tech utopianism, the datafication of all human interaction,
and the exploitation of that data by corporations. Through fascinating characters—master programmers who want to remake the world from scratch as if redesigning a video game and bankers who return from Burning Man convinced that incentivized capitalism is the solution to environmental
disasters—Rushkoff explains why those with the most power to change our current trajectory have no interest in doing so. And he shows how recent forms of anti-mainstream rebellion—QAnon, for example, or meme stocks—reinforce the same destructive order.
This mind-blowing work of social analysis shows us how to transcend the landscape The Mindset created—a world alive with algorithms and intelligences actively rewarding our most selfish tendencies—and rediscover community, mutual aid, and human interdependency. In a thundering
conclusion, Survival of the Richest argues that the only way to survive the coming catastrophe is to ensure it doesn’t happen in the first place.
Five mysterious billionaires summoned theorist Douglas Rushkoff to a desert resort for a private talk.
The topic? How to survive the “Event”: the societal catastrophe they know is coming. Rushkoff came to understand that these men were under the influence of The Mindset, a Silicon Valley–style certainty that they and their cohort can break the laws of physics, economics, and morality to escape a disaster
of their own making—as long as they have enough money and the right technology.
In Survival of the Richest, Rushkoff traces the origins of The Mindset in science and technology through its current expression in missions to Mars, island bunkers, AI futurism, and the metaverse. In a dozen urgent, electrifying chapters, he confronts tech utopianism, the datafication of all human interaction,
and the exploitation of that data by corporations. Through fascinating characters—master programmers who want to remake the world from scratch as if redesigning a video game and bankers who return from Burning Man convinced that incentivized capitalism is the solution to environmental
disasters—Rushkoff explains why those with the most power to change our current trajectory have no interest in doing so. And he shows how recent forms of anti-mainstream rebellion—QAnon, for example, or meme stocks—reinforce the same destructive order.
This mind-blowing work of social analysis shows us how to transcend the landscape The Mindset created—a world alive with algorithms and intelligences actively rewarding our most selfish tendencies—and rediscover community, mutual aid, and human interdependency. In a thundering
conclusion, Survival of the Richest argues that the only way to survive the coming catastrophe is to ensure it doesn’t happen in the first place.
Ratings and reviews
4.0
4 reviews
Tannie Duong
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October 13, 2022
His writing is refreshing and completely different than what is typically fed to the general public through news articles. He's tribal voice had a tinge of positivity despite much of today's gloom and doom about the future, robots and humanity. A recommended read for the curious and inquisitive.
Wayne Wikkerink
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October 4, 2022
A point of view worth considering...
About the author
Douglas Rushkoff was born on February 18, 1961. After graduating from Princeton University he received an MFA in Directing from California Institute of the Arts. He has written numerous magazine columns on topics including cyberculture and has been aired on CBS Sunday Morning and NPR's All Things Considered and published in The New York Times and Time magazine. Rushkoff has taught at the MaybeLogic Academy, NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, and the Esalen Institute, and he teaches media studies at the New School University. Rushkoff lectures around the world about media, art, society, and change at conferences and universities. He consults to museums, governments, synagogues, churches, universities, and companies on new media arts and ethics. Rushkoff won the first Neil Postman award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity. He is on the Boards of the Media Ecology Association, The Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, Technorealism, The National Association for Media Literacy Education, MeetUp.com, and Hyperwords. His bestselling books include graphic novels, Cyberia, Media Virus, Playing the Future, Nothing Sacred: The Truth about Judaism, Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out, Coercion, and Life Inc.
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