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.
