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Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires

by Douglas Rushkoff (Author)
Editors' pick Best Nonfiction
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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.

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  1. ISBN-10
    0393881067
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0393881066
  3. Publisher
    W. W. Norton & Company
  4. Publication date
    September 6, 2022
  5. Language
    English
  6. Dimensions
    5.7 x 0.9 x 8.6 inches
  7. Print length
    224 pages
  8. See all details
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From the Publisher

Praise for Survival of the Richest from Naomi Klein

Editorial Reviews

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, including Media Virus, Program or Be Programmed, and Present Shock. He lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.

Product details

  • 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
  • Customer Reviews:

About the author

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Douglas Rushkoff

Douglas Rushkoff

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Named one of the “world’s ten most influential intellectuals” by MIT, Douglas Rushkoff is an author and documentarian who studies human autonomy in a digital age. His twenty books include the upcoming Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires, Team Human, based on his podcast, as well as the bestsellers Present Shock, Throwing Rocks and the Google Bus, Program or Be Programmed, Life Inc, and Media Virus. He also made the PBS Frontline documentaries Generation Like, The Persuaders, and Merchants of Cool. His book Coercion won the Marshall McLuhan Award, and the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.

He coined such concepts as “viral media,” “screenagers,” and “social currency,” and has been a leading voice for applying digital media toward social and economic justice. He a research fellow of the Institute for the Future, and Professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics at CUNY/Queens. He is a columnist for Medium, and his novels and comics, Ecstasy Club, A.D.D, and Aleister & Adolf, are all being developed for the screen.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
393 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Less of content than I'd hoped
Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2024
Verified Purchase
There are enough quotes from the wealthy to terrify people, but the book is less about that than possible solutions.

There's plenty about the elite religion of transhumanism, which seems to be gnosticism repackaged (I've been reading about the Cathar heresy of the Albigensian Crusades lately and can't stop the mental association between that and what the elites appear to believe; perhaps it never died? Or perhaps all religions based on the serpent's promise in Eden just have similar traits- man as god, no death, forbidden knowledge, make your own rules.)

One sign of how much trouble we're in is my genuine surprise that the author- a self-proclaimed Marxist- actually seems to care about the poor instead of siding with billionaire plutocrats. It's been so long since the economic left got bought out by Wall street (post-OWS) I'd forgotten they used to exist. I'm realizing too late they had good points.

Chesterton pointed out a century ago that the fear of the poor drove the eugenic policy of the rich. That driving fear seems not to have been abated.
7 people found this helpful
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Danelectro
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating book on the rich trying to escape environmental destruction
Reviewed in the United States on August 11, 2023
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Amazing book on the ultra rich who contributed to ecological disaster and who then execute outlandish plans to go to Mars, hide in underground bunkers, build their paradises on islands, or research technology that may (or never may) allow themselves to be downloaded onto computers. In short, these are the wealthy and powerful who will do anything other than contribute to the solution of humans living more sustainably on our only planet, and living by a different ethics. The book makes one recognize how much saving ourselves and other life forms will be up to the ordinary citizen rather than those with the power to more effectively influence significant changes in our culture. The book illustrates without preaching how great wealth can taint outlook and can render the privileged more narcissistic and self-serving.
11 people found this helpful
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B Dundore
4.0 out of 5 stars important awakening
Reviewed in the United States on December 24, 2022
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Well written diatribe on the hubris and arrogance of technology and Technosolutionism. Always informative and frequently depressing, a very necessary read to alert the mind about the world that is being created while we sleep.
8 people found this helpful
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Randy
5.0 out of 5 stars Worth reading
Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2024
Verified Purchase
Arrived in timely fashion and is as described, understanding book
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James Jewell
5.0 out of 5 stars Longtime fan not disappointed by a stylistic shift
Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2022
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It wouldn't be fair for me NOT to offer the caveat that I am a fan of Rushkoff's work, but this is both fully in the vein of and a departure from previous work. His ideas still shine through, but he reaches them more through storytelling than he has in some other books, and the result is a personal and thoughtful journey. Understanding "the mindset" becomes as powerful a lens as his observations on the viral proliferation of ideas were when I encountered them in 1995. A must for fans, but an especially accessible entry into the world of his work.
19 people found this helpful
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Gonzalo Abal
3.0 out of 5 stars Preaching to the deaf?
Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2023
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The title is attractive, but misleading. You must plow through 70% of the book to get (slightly) into topic: the escape fantasies of billionaires. This first 70% is composed mostly of more or less plausible opinions about the billionary way of thinking (apparently there is such a thing), funny personal anecdotes and the occasional wisdom that saves the day (like the Coyote analogy for the mindset!). To put a name on the monster (the mindset) is a start. So, we are informed that everything is doomed and goes to hell any moment. Ok, we know that, we bought this book ! In front of this there are three basic approaches: i) you don' t give a damn, negate everything as distasteful and enjoy the ride while you can; ii) you think, invent and fix things while keeping the illusion of infinite growth based on finite resources and keep accumulating wealth and power or iii) you reduce steam, slow down and try to reconnect with nature's limits. This usually requires collective action based on local communities and leaving cities of more than, say, 50000 people rot as they are not sustainable. Most low and middle class people suscribe to (i) instinctively, as a survival strategy. People in the mindset suscribe to (ii) and make things happen, within the mindset. They fuel the acceleration, literally and metaphorically. People on (iii) are usually radicals, communists, materialists or all three in one and achieve different degrees of consistency between ideas and reality. The author informs us, through several delightful personal snippets, that he used to get part of his income from (ii) but his inner self really suscribes to (iii). The personal contradiction has been resolved by the act of publishing this book. No more invitations to secluded luxury retreats can be expected in the future. This is great, but the author seems to me too embeded intellectually in the analysis of the mindset for his own good. I suggest he should use some nihilism from (i) and put it in practice within (iii) following his own advice, as given in the last 30% of the book. Perhaps use this book's revenue to get a few acres of land, plant a few hundred trees and take due care of them (grapes, olives, nuts, details are not relevant). You can add some animals, if you take proper care of them. Never plant or add beyond what YOU or your family can personally care for. When fruit shows up (3-6 years later) do something rewarding with it. Curiously, you may find that this experience puts the things you think and write about into a more meaningful perspective. Thoreau did it in Walden and said it was instructive. I am doing it (olives and sheep) and can confirm it is. Youv'e got to experience the effort involved in real downscaling before changing anyone's mind about it. if you are able to do so, I'm sure I will not want to miss your next book.
10 people found this helpful
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Margaret Dobrowolska
5.0 out of 5 stars  Coming back to our humanity
Reviewed in the United States on October 25, 2022
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Is the solution to problems we created by adopting “the Mindset”. Circular business practice, collective activities, closeness to the other human beings, living in the present, are the answers for woes of our civilization. Thank you Douglas Rushkoff for an idea so simple, yet brilliant and productive.
12 people found this helpful
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Barry
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting book and great title
Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2022
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Interesting book about how billionaires are messing up the world in case you didn't already know that.
3 people found this helpful
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Lazlo Panaflex
5.0 out of 5 stars Must Read!
Reviewed in Canada on April 23, 2023
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An excellent explanation of the current business model of the internet.
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Davina Powell
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent analysis
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 25, 2023
Verified Purchase
We only need three rules in life:
Be kind, do no harm and share nicely like your mother taught you. The insane people deliberately perpetuating a system that contravenes any of the above? Well, as my husband likes to metaphorically put it “there’s no shame in showbizz…”
Highly recommend ✌🏾❣️
2 people found this helpful
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Antonio Vena
5.0 out of 5 stars The Mindset con il Mondo
Reviewed in Italy on October 8, 2022
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Libro importante. Team Human sempre.
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Krunos
5.0 out of 5 stars It's a good read
Reviewed in Australia on December 29, 2022
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There is so much in this book to get things started bogle your own mind with it and come up with your own conclusions.
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susan worts
5.0 out of 5 stars Survival of the Richest by Douglas Rushkoff
Reviewed in Canada on October 26, 2022
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Beautifully written and extremely informative. I highly recommend it to others. Will purchase more by this author!
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