"Intriguing…[Survival of the Richest ] shows the degree to which serious money is fretting about a looming disaster [and how] this scramble to organise the logistics of bunker life may make the underlying problems worse."
Financial Times (UK) - Gillian Tett
"A scary, true and unsettling look at what happens when money causes people to lose their humanity."
"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."
"Dark and revealing…Rushkoff provides a powerful critique of the attitudes and technologies that enable these deceptions."
"Survival of the Richest reveals fascinating tidbits about the elite tech crowd’s postapocalyptic survival strategies and the niche solutions being marketed to them."
Science - Carolyn Wong Simpkins
"Rushkoff’s knowledge of digital technology shines…horrifying us with the capacities of the machines we’ve built and the ways they have been used against us. This is an important book."
"Rushkoff is well worth reading [and] uncannily right."
Times Literary Supplement (UK) - Michele Pridmore-Brown
"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. Rushkoff confronts the reader with a ridiculous conundrum: how is it possible that people who have powerfully shaped our society and economy and have reaped enormous financial rewards in the process are doing everything possible to escape the world they’ve created?"
"[Rushkoff’s] report is both fierce and amazed in the face of capitalism’s delusions; I for one am sharpening my pitchfork."
"Survival of the Richest is more than a primer on a soulless worldview pervading all aspects of life.…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."
06/27/2022
Media theorist Rushkoff (Team Human ) presents a fascinating and distressing account of how the very wealthy prep for doomsday. His premise is that über-rich individuals are operating with “The Mindset,” or the belief that with enough wealth and resources, they can “insulate themselves from the damage they are creating” and survive an event that decimates the general population. Rushkoff introduces readers to the purveyor of multiple “residential farm communities for millionaires” designed to provide safety for the upper class in the future; the concept of “seasteading,” the creation of “independent, free-floating city-states” in the ocean; and “prepper construction companies” in Texas that offer million-dollar luxury bunkers outfitted with bowling allies and pools. He also argues that supposedly innovative solutions to climate change that focus on the crisis as an opportunity for continued economic growth are only going to make the rich richer at the expense of everyone else. It’s all rather intriguing, even if a couple of chapters feel somewhat tangential (one is a brief history of how the internet went from an ethos of “serving others” to a source of profits). This is an eye-popping look at some outlandish visions for the future. Agent: Mollie Glick, Creative Artists Agency. (Sept.)
"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."
"Dark and revealing… Rushkoff provides a powerful critique of the attitudes and technologies that enable these deceptions."
"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 ."
"Numbing and mind-blowing in equal measure, Survival of the Richest reveals how tech billionaires are planning to survive a global apocalypse."
"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."
"[H]arrowing and illuminating."
PopMatters - Chris Barsanti
"With razor-sharp insight, Rushkoff unwraps the dazzling facade of the technological dream, revealing the alarming Mindset that underlies promises of planetary salvation."
"Rushkoff gives us a sober, scathing oddsmaking on the recursive wager of the ultra-rich."
"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."
"Douglas Rushkoff has always been a singular observer and thinker. Embedded near the epicenters of the digital revolution from its hopeful outlaw start through the oppressive mega-corporate current condition, he has never flinched along the way from honestly delivering fresh, radical, humane critiques of the emerging world. There are plenty of books decrying the horrors of 21st century monopoly capitalism and inequality, and the existential threats posed by technology and hellbent growth, but none quite like Survival of the Richest . Rushkoff is essential—not just a passionate visionary on the side of the angels, but the rare one who can write."
"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... How is it possible that people who have powerfully shaped our society and economy and have reaped enormous financial rewards in the process are doing everything possible to escape the world they’ve created?... This should give us all pause—if they want to escape their creations, why give them the power to rule our lives in the first place?"
Marina Gorbis / Executive Director
08/01/2022
Five billionaires asked Rushkoff (digital economics and media theory, CUNY Queens Coll.; Team Human ) to speak at an event on a remote island. They wanted advice on building bunkers for an apocalyptic event. These billionaires had something that Rushkoff calls "the Mindset," an escapist belief that the wealthy and most technologically efficient can somehow leave the laws of physics and economics, and ultimately other people, behind. The author presents several examples of the Mindset, including COVID and the quarantine it necessitated. For instance, Rushkoff writes, the pandemic helped many people to justify a societal trend already in progress: isolation from others and life in a technology bubble. He cites a lot of research from news outlets, books, scholarship on technology, politics, human behavior, and sustainability to drive home his point that technology is running society. VERDICT Rushkoff's anecdotes and relatable voice will attract readers interested in technology and business, as well as those who want to know more about how wealthy tech magnates live.—Natalie Browning
2022-06-21
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.
