Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
von Douglas Rushkoff
The principles for building a more circular economy that isn’t dependent on growth are straightforward. Keep resources and revenue recirculating through the community, and accessible to the working class. Leverage the power of mutual aid to lift up one member of the community at a time, each according to their need. Maintain independence from big employers and disinterested investors by owning businesses cooperatively with other workers. The Mindset is based in a staunchly atheistic and materialist scientism, a faith in technology to solve problems, an adherence to biases of digital code, an understanding of human relationships as market phenomena, a fear of nature and women, a need to see one’s contributions as utterly unique innovations without precedent, and an urge to neutralize the unknown by dominating and de-animating it.
The Mindset is based in a staunchly atheistic and materialist scientism, a faith in technology to solve problems, an adherence to biases of digital code, an understanding of human relationships as market phenomena, a fear of nature and women, a need to see one’s contributions as utterly unique innovations without precedent, and an urge to neutralize the unknown by dominating and de-animating it.
Dawkins’s model of human-as-hardware, and those of intellectually compatible colleagues like Daniel Dennett and Stephen Pinker, won out in Silicon Valley. Their views were entirely more compatible with business models that depended on manipulating human beings instead of empowering them—exploiting them for profit rather than giving them opportunities for collective creativity.
We can still be individuals; we just need to define our sense of self a bit differently than the algorithms do. We’re not individuals to be counted, surveilled, data-analyzed, and manipulated under a pretense of convenience and connectivity. We are instead individual sensing organisms, moving into deeper relationships with other people and nature. It’s the opposite trip.
We didn’t realize that banishing government from the internet would create a free zone for corporate colonization. We hadn’t yet discovered that government and business balance each other out—a bit like fungus and bacteria in the body. Get rid of one, and the other runs rampant.
More than anything, they have succumbed to a mindset where “winning” means earning enough money to insulate themselves from the damage they are creating by earning money in that way. It’s as if they want to build a car that goes fast enough to escape from its own exhaust.
"The principles for building a more circular economy that isn’t dependent on growth are straightforward. Keep resources and revenue recirculating through the community, and accessible to the working class. Leverage the power of mutual aid to lift up one member of the community at a time, each according to their need. Maintain independence from big employers and disinterested investors by owning businesses cooperatively with other workers."
"The Mindset is based in a staunchly atheistic and materialist scientism, a faith in technology to solve problems, an adherence to biases of digital code, an understanding of human relationships as market phenomena, a fear of nature and women, a need to see one’s contributions as utterly unique innovations without precedent, and an urge to neutralize the unknown by dominating and de-animating it."
"Dawkins’s model of human-as-hardware, and those of intellectually compatible colleagues like Daniel Dennett and Stephen Pinker, won out in Silicon Valley. Their views were entirely more compatible with business models that depended on manipulating human beings instead of empowering them—exploiting them for profit rather than giving them opportunities for collective creativity."
"We can still be individuals; we just need to define our sense of self a bit differently than the algorithms do. We’re not individuals to be counted, surveilled, data-analyzed, and manipulated under a pretense of convenience and connectivity. We are instead individual sensing organisms, moving into deeper relationships with other people and nature. It’s the opposite trip."
"We didn’t realize that banishing government from the internet would create a free zone for corporate colonization. We hadn’t yet discovered that government and business balance each other out—a bit like fungus and bacteria in the body. Get rid of one, and the other runs rampant."
"More than anything, they have succumbed to a mindset where “winning” means earning enough money to insulate themselves from the damage they are creating by earning money in that way. It’s as if they want to build a car that goes fast enough to escape from its own exhaust."
"The belief that we can code our way out of this mess presumes the world is made of code, and anything that isn’t yet code can eventually be converted to a digital format as easily as a vinyl record can be translated to a streaming file."
- →More than anything, they have succumbed to a mindset where “winning” means earning enough money to insulate themselves from the damage they are creating by earning money in that way. It’s as if they want to build a car that goes fast enough to escape from its own exhaust.
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