Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires

Written by Douglas Rushkoff

Narrated by Douglas Rushkoff

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781705079720

Douglas Rushkoff

Douglas Rushkoff is the author of 10 bestselling books on media and culture, including Cyberia, Media Virus!, Playing the Future, Coercion: Why We Listen to What "They" Say, and the novels Ecstasy Club and Exit Strategy.

Reviews for Survival of the Richest

[I Haps · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent overall. More media needs to be putting a spotlight on tech BS.

[tether sparks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not titled very accurately but still a good read, a lot of eye opening points

[Melody ELMOSELHI · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Credible, frightening and inspiring. Required reading for all of us.

[Lohe Ka Hekili · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

it seems a necessity to read it, I learned here

[Adam Rozak · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The book’s argument is well thought out and told in a compelling way through Rushkoff’s personal stories and through research. I would have given 5 stars if there weren’t as many topical event references forced into this book that do little to support the argument (Q anon, Eppstein, GameStop, etc.).