Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires

Named One of the Most Anticipated Books of 2022 by Kirkus and Literary Hub

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.

Review

“Dark and revealing… Rushkoff provides a powerful critique of the attitudes and technologies that enable these deceptions.”
Washington Post

“Survival of the Richest reveals fascinating tidbits about the elite tech crowd’s postapocalyptic survival strategies and the niche solutions being marketed to them.”
Carolyn Wong Simpkins, Science

“[H]arrowing and illuminating.”
Chris Barsanti, PopMatters

“A devastating portrait of the cultures and logics underlying big tech. Rushkoff is going to make you mad enough to fight back. A vital, lucid, and enraging read.”
Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate

“Survival of the Richest is more than a primer on a soulless worldview pervading all aspects of life. Defying fantasies of escape―from each other, from earthliness, from Earth―Rushkoff offers something at once more realistic and more imaginative: mutual regard, responsibility, and flourishing. In so doing, he mounts an impassioned defense of everything and everyone marked expendable in the fanatical pursuit of a blank slate.”
Jenny Odell

“Douglas Rushkoff has always been a singular observer and thinker. Embedded near the epicenters of the digital revolution, he has never flinched from honestly delivering fresh, radical, humane critiques of the emerging world. There are plenty of books decrying the horrors of twenty-first-century monopoly capitalism, but none quite like Survival of the Richest.”
Kurt Anderson, author of Evil Geniuses

“Beyond eye-opening, this book is eye-popping. A master storyteller, Rushkoff brings to life perhaps the greatest challenge of our time. A must-read.”
Frances Moore Lappé, author or coauthor of twenty books, from Diet for a Small Planet to Daring Democracy

“Rushkoff gives us a sober, scathing oddsmaking on the recursive wager of the ultra-rich.”
Cory Doctorow

“[Rushkoff’s] report is both fierce and amazed in the face of capitalism’s delusions; I for one am sharpening my pitchfork.”
Jonathan Lethem

“Douglas Rushkoff’s keen eye as a seasoned media analyst, combined with his flair and wit as a writer and a performer, shine in this book.”
Marina Gorbis, executive director of Institute for the Future

“A hilarious and lacerating look at the elite sociopathy wrecking the world, and a call to arms for how the rest of us can fight it.”
― Molly Crabapple, author of Drawing Blood and coauthor (with Marwan Hisham) of Brothers of the Gun

“With razor-sharp insight, Rushkoff unwraps the dazzling facade of the technological dream, revealing the alarming Mindset that underlies promises of planetary salvation.”
Jeremy Lent, author of The Patterning Instinct and The Web of Meaning

“A scary, true and unsettling look at what happens when money causes people to lose their humanity.”
Seth Godin

“Numbing and mind-blowing in equal measure, Survival of the Richest reveals how tech billionaires are planning to survive a global apocalypse.”
BookPage

“[A] thorough and authoritative condemnation of tech worship.”
― Kirkus Reviews

“A shocking account of how the very wealthy prep for doomsday [and]…an eye-popping look at some outlandish visions for the future.”
Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Douglas Rushkoff is professor of media theory and digital economics at Queens/CUNY. Named one of the world’s ten most influential intellectuals by MIT, he hosts the Team Human podcast and has written many award-winning books. He lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company (September 6, 2022)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393881067
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393881066
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.8 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.7 x 0.9 x 8.6 inches

See related:

• The Billionaire Mindset to Survive Global Societal Collapse like Abrupt Climate System Change
• Misplaced Metaphors in the Anthropocene: Beware of the Devastating Power of Cultural Clichés & Misconstrued Metaphors on a Small Planet
• The Vulnerability of the Global Food System and the Strategies Needed for a Sustainable “Recovery”
• The Malthus Insight and the Global Limits of “Green Revolution” Food Production
• “If you do not change direction, you will most likely end up where you are headed.”
• The Fatal Consequences of a Misplaced Metaphor: Agriculture Industry and Infinite Growth
• Killing the Soil that Feeds Us: Food, Profit & the Fatal Impact of Petro-Dependent Agriculture
• The mistake of petro-intensive agriculture – the UNA “Global Engagement Summit”

The Billionaire Mindset to Survive Global Societal Collapse like Abrupt Climate System Change

Paul Beckwith Mar 4, 2023

Over the last week or so I read the new book by Douglas Rushkoff called “Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires”.

The book gives many fascinating insights into the Mindset of many billionaires, their worldview that we are heading to societal collapse, and how they are hoping to survive in bunkers or on remote islands in the event of global catastrophe.

The core of the book is how Rushkoff was invited to an exclusive resort in the middle of the desert, for one-third his annual professor salary, to what he thought was a talk to a hundred of the wealthiest people. Instead, he met with five billionaires and peppered with questions such as “New Zealand or Alaska?”; what’s the best place to be to survive climate catastrophe causing societal collapse.

I found the book fascinating, so I chat about the ideas and thoughts of the super elite, who are much more concerned about saving their own hides than they are about the well-being of the people on the planet; they just want to escape. They make little effort to “save humanity” and are absolutely certain societal order and civilization will soon collapse. The more money and power they accumulate, the less empathy they have for others, borne out by studies measuring brain activity patterns.

I have often said that we need to take the entire military budget of the USA (about 800 Billion $ for 2023) and use it to fight climate change for a few years. That’s a tough sell, but one billionaire near the top of the heap has about one third of that amount, so the top three or four billionaires could match that amount. Utopian, I know, but times are getting very desperate.

Please donate at http://PaulBeckwith.net to support my research and videos as I join-the-dots on abrupt climate system change.

See related:

• Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
• Misplaced Metaphors in the Anthropocene: Beware of the Devastating Power of Cultural Clichés & Misconstrued Metaphors on a Small Planet
• Overcoming the Multiple Legacies of European Colonialism: Can The West Survive Its Most Cherished Historical Myths?
• “Just take the case of agriculture…”
• Why The World Is Running Out Of Soil
• The Vulnerability of the Global Food System and the Strategies Needed for a Sustainable “Recovery”
• The Malthus Insight and the Global Limits of “Green Revolution” Food Production
• “If you do not change direction, you will most likely end up where you are headed.”
• The Fatal Consequences of a Misplaced Metaphor: Agriculture Industry and Infinite Growth
• Killing the Soil that Feeds Us: Food, Profit & the Fatal Impact of Petro-Dependent Agriculture
• The mistake of petro-intensive agriculture – the UNA “Global Engagement Summit”

Secrets of Stonehenge 3715 ✪ PBS Nova Documentary Channel

PBS Nova Documentary Channel Mar 14, 2017

We always have to keep in mind that a Documentary, after all, can tell lies and it can tell lies because it lays claim to a form of veracity which fiction doesn’t. Some of the documentaries are made just to discredit some particular person, party, organization, system etc, but most of them here on TDF are non biased, without prejudice and worth watching.

CalTopo – Backcountry Mapping Evolved

and

International Map Collectors’ Society (IMCOS)

IMCoS was the idea of Yasha Beresiner, map and stamp dealer in London, and he arranged a seminar in Birmingham on 6 June 1980 where an acting committee was formed with Malcolm Young as chairman, a computer expert as membership secretary, an accountant as treasurer, a journal editor and some committee members. It was formally inaugurated on 13 September that year at the National Liberal Club in London with Rodney Shirley as the first president. It was agreed that the Society would have regional meetings in England in order to gain members who had an interest in early maps be they collectors, dealers, academics, librarians, or plain enthusiasts.

Regional meetings were initially held in various cities in England and by the end of its first year IMCoS had 180 members in 21 countries. It was also decided to hold a map fair in London with an auction, a map raffle and a dinner and this was to be called a symposium. The first one was held at the Grosvenor Hotel, Victoria, London, and was a great success establishing IMCoS as a much-needed forum for map collectors. A fair was held yearly, organised by the committee until 2004 when it passed to a committee of map dealers. It soon became clear to Rodney and Malcolm that if IMCoS was to be an international society there must be international representatives. These were duly appointed and the first symposium outside England was held in Amsterdam in 1982. About 28 people attended and the highlight of the weekend was a viewing of the large Polder maps of Holland which were on display (on the floor because of their size).

Since then the Society has held an International Symposium every year in many parts of the world including Europe, and as far afield as Israel, North America, Singapore, Australia, Japan, Turkey, New Zealand, Guatemala, South Korea and South Africa. This year’s symposium is being held in Chicago in conjunction with the Kenneth Nebenzahl Lectures. During these events members have been lucky enough to view at first hand some of the rarest and most important maps in the world, including the Mappa Mundi in Hereford Cathedral, the Juan de la Cosa portolan world map of 1500 in Madrid, the only extant copy of van den Keere’s world map of 1611 in the Sutro Library, California, and the Madaba map made up of mosaics which is on the floor of a village church near Amman in Jordan. During a visit to Rome we were overwhelmed by a display of portolan charts in the Vatican Library, which had been brought out solely for IMCoS members.

The Society has had a number of chairmen following Malcolm Young (1980–88): Tony Burgess, Susan Gole, Jenny Harvey and now, Hans Kok from Holland, who has held the position since 2005. Presidents following Rodney Shirley (author of a number of books including the much acclaimed The Mapping of the World ), have been Dr Helen Wallis, Oswald Dreyer Eimbcke, Roger Baskes, Sarah Tyacke, and currently, Peter Barber OBE, who retired recently as Head of Map Collections at the British Library.

An IMCoS award has been presented each year to an individual who, in the opinion of the Selection Committee, has been responsible for cartographic contributions of great merit and interest to map collectors worldwide. In certain circumstances a group of people or an organisation could be eligible. The first award of the special silver plate went to Valerie Scott (now Newby) who was Editor of The Map Collector and author of a series of county histories. It was presented by the ‘Grand Old Man of Maps’ Ronald Vere Tooley, who ran the map department at Francis Edwards in Marylebone High Street, London. The most recent recipient was Catherine Hofmann of the Map Department at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Other notable recipients included Dr Brian Harley, Professor David Woodward, Dr Helen Wallis OBE and Joseph Fitzgerald who founded the Miami Map Fair.

The quarterly IMCoS Journal has been published throughout the life of the Society under different editors. It helps to unite map collectors from all parts of the globe and includes articles by experts on a vast range of subjects relating to maps. There have been a number of different editors and formats but the aims of the journal remain the same: to report on the events taking place within the Society and to publish a range of articles of interest to our members. The Society has now entered the digital age with an informative website which has just been redesigned.

Regular activities are the annual Collectors’ Meeting where members bring their maps for identification or to show to others who might be interested. This event has been chaired in recent years by Francis Herbert, retired Map Librarian of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). Also, the annual IMCoS dinner which is always held on the night before the London Map Fair. It is here that the IMCoS/Helen Wallis award is presented every year.

…(read more).

HomeTeam History – YouTube

Remembering our ancestors through reasonable dialogue and reclaiming the world from an African perspective. Join me as I discuss African history, culture and worldview and what it all really means for us today. I encourage us to learn and share our thoughts as this will help us reclaim Our story and pioneer a new culture of awareness.

“I am because we are and we are because I am”- African Diaspora

See also:

See related:

• The Africa Map Circle – Introduction & Digital Resource Directory
• Learning Under Lockdown: Some Tools & Tips for Online Learning About Africa & the World
• Mapping the Slave Trade: 1556-1823 – A Digital Humanities Project
• What is the “Africa Map Circle?” What does it Do? What can it help me do? [Excerpt of “Looted Past”]
• The African Historical Graphics Archive
• The Africa Map Circle – a brief introduction.
  and
• The Africa Map Circle – “Explorations”

James Webb Space Telescope images shatter understanding of age of the universe

NBC News – Feb 24, 2023

#JamesWebbSpaceTelescope

#NBCNews

#Universe

The James Webb Space Telescope found six massive galaxies that some scientists never thought could exist. The telescope is so powerful it might have just shattered scientific understanding of the universe. Theoretical Physicist and best selling author Dr. Michio Kaku talked to Gadi Schwartz about the groundbreaking report.