num_pages: 224
description: 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 Valleystyle certainty that they and their cohort can break the laws of physics economics and morality to escape a disaster of their own makingas 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 charactersmaster 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 disastersRushkoff 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 rebellionQAnon for example or meme stocksreinforce the same destructive order.This mind-blowing work of social analysis shows us how to transcend the landscape The Mindset createda world alive with algorithms and intelligences actively rewarding our most selfish tendenciesand 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 doesnt happen in the first place.
language: English
title: Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
publisher: W. W. Norton & Company