SURVIVAL OF THE RICHEST

A media theorist dismantles the tech-centric fantasies of the wealthiest people in the world.

In this scathing book, Rushkoff opens with an account of a meeting he attended with five of the world’s richest men, who sought his opinions on their strategies to survive an “Event” that would render the world as we know it unlivable. These men and the rest of their technocrat counterparts suffer from what Rushkoff calls “The Mindset,” a worldview marked by a staunch bias toward quantifiable data and “a faith in technology to solve problems,” especially the problems that those billionaires’ own technologies have wrought. While digital technologies initially offered opportunities for more meaningfully connected and innovative ways of life, Rushkoff argues that the hopes were corrupted by market goals. As a result, new technologies were designed less for consumer satisfaction and more for investor profit. Another major detriment is the winner-take-all attitude among tech “innovators,” who aren’t interested in incremental progress as much as creating a singular invention for which they can take all the credit. However, notes the author, “these totalizing solutions perpetuate the myth that only a technocratic elite can possibly fix our problems.” Rushkoff describes an interesting connection between tech billionaires and the prominence of psychedelics in tech culture, further illustrating the need of the tech elite to believe that they are singularly capable of providing the solutions humankind needs—while getting rich in the process. The idea that technology can remedy the ills that technology created is founded on a faulty belief that only what’s quantifiable has value, but the “squishier” subjects and ways of thinking that explore our dignity and humanity are still important, and it is imperative we don’t leave them behind. Though Rushkoff occasionally displays too evident a disdain for his subjects, he writes with knowledge and authority. The text conveys an appropriately urgent and serious message, while the closing section offers sound reason for hope and reasonable steps to take for a better future.

A dense but thorough and authoritative condemnation of tech worship.