
Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires

When value is best created by going meta, the data points about our world tend to become more important than whatever is in the world itself.
Douglas Rushkoff • Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
In other words, everything down here on the ground could be just fine if we weren’t burdened with satisfying the needs of the abstracted map we created to represent our world for the benefit of the obscenely wealthy.
Douglas Rushkoff • Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
Under scientism, humans are just robots running programs—either the ones dictated by our genes, or destructive pathogens like spirituality. However, by refusing to understand how meaning-making is a subtle community project related to the ways we live together, this orthodox scientism denies any scheme of things where human agency—hand in hand with
... See moreDouglas Rushkoff • Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
From my perspective, this wasn’t the beginning of the Internet Revolution, but the end. We were starting to care less about how this technology could augment humanity and more about how it could bolster a flagging stock exchange.
Douglas Rushkoff • Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
At some point, manufacturing hits the hard limits of human labor and physical matter itself.
Douglas Rushkoff • Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
software companies are no longer programming computers; they are programming us people.
Douglas Rushkoff • Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
Yet, forcibly removed from the greater contexts of meaning and morality, science easily falls into the service of domination and control, providing justification for the most alienated features of The Mindset.
Douglas Rushkoff • Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
understanding of human relationships as market phenomena,
Douglas Rushkoff • Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
However we may slice it, The Mindset favors the extraordinary achievements of wealthy individuals using technology to set themselves apart from the common folk, control the natural environment, and overcome the cycles of life.