Douglas Rushkoff | Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
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- Опубліковано 26 сер 2024
- Recorded September 20, 2022
In conversation with Kevin Werbach
Acclaimed for their intersectional explorations of cyberculture, religion, currency, and politics, Douglas Rushkoff’s 20 bestselling books include Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, Program or Be Programmed, Present Shock, and Media Virus. He also is the host of the Team Human podcast, writes a column for Medium, and created the PBS Frontline documentaries Generation Like, The Persuaders, and Merchants of Cool. A professor of media theory and digital economics at City University of New York, Queens College, he was selected as one of the world’s 10 most influential intellectuals by MIT, was the first winner of the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity, is a recipient of the Marshall McLuhan Award, and has received many other accolades. In Survival of the Richest, Rushkoff reveals the flawed mindset that has led out-of-touch tech titans to prepare for a societal catastrophe they could simply avert through practical measures.
Chair of the Department of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Ken Werbach is the author of For the Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business and The Blockchain and the New Architecture of Trust. He served on the Obama administration’s presidential transition team and helped develop the Federal Communications Commission’s approach to internet policy.
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Even getting my neighbors to say hello is like pulling teeth. They seem very frightened of even simple interactions.
Rushkoff is spot on. I've been a fan since reading his novel Ecstasy Club in the 90s. He's one of the best minds on the planet with a clear angle on where we are and where we are going.
Audience asking great questions...
He was very polite to the guy who thinks that China is a communist country, I would have been much more direct.
The lawnmower highlights his naivety. If everyone shares the lawnmower some neighbours may abuse it, not clean it up or break it. And everyone is using it ot won't last as long so we end up having to buy a newone more often. That's why we buy our own - it's better for social cohesion and is better value. We don't buy things to make companies rich. Also the whole Bannon thing sounds like a conspiracy theory.
Brilliant mind, must share far and wide this wealth of understanding and info on so many levels.
Can’t Wait to read this book but have to wait for a month from my local library 😇🥰
He is a good storyteller
Precisamente estava a falar sobre isso hoje, eles vêem o mudo de outra forma
Ironic that he mentions "Wired Magazine"- which appeared on the scene right as i was completing the patent writing process for the invention of "artificial reality" (US Patent 5394029). Every detail of my invention had been copied in mock-ups (fake equipment that did not actually function yet)- with the big story being "Virtual Reality!" Why? What was it about my name for my invention ("artificial reality"- like "artificial intelligence")- that the creators of "Wired Magazine" were afraid of? I simply edited the patent application to read "virtual reality", and mailed it off. A couple years later, we were awarded the first ever patent for the field of "virtual reality".
I soon realized that what these billionaires fear is the idea that if you can have "artificial reality"- this might cue the public to the fact that there is such a thing as "real reality" (as opposed to the fake reality and fake news that they have been feeding the public for over 100 years, at least). I have spent the past 30 years studying the REAL reality and REAL history of the USA- including the realities of UFO's, water-burning cars, free energy, suppressed cures for cancer, etc.
"The worms go in. The worms go out. The worms play Minecraft on your snout. They eat your eyes. They eat your nose. They eat the jelly between your toes.." - A bunker is as good as any other hole in the ground for use as a grave- the assurance of death and the coming hell that these killers must face.
Among other strange things Rushkoff mixed purpose of school and University/college. Students need to start becoming professionals, that enterprises need. But IMHO humankind need such thinkers as Rushkoff.
The fact that we are talking about this and not the science of Nikolai Tesla is the main reason things won't change for anyone on earth when the air runs dry. Tribulation is the best source of wisdom for mortals.
The way to tune down tribulation is to call it discomfort.
Crazy World
The billionaires screwed “the people” for billions only to realize their money will mean nothing in the end. LOL😂🤣😂🤣.
Definitely Twilight Zone material.
Have you forgotten about Mars?
@@terence7752 Ah yes the uninhabitable planet, yes I have heard of it, not sure how that applies.
Onde é que vamos parar?
Como chegamos até aquí?
What does he mean by the derivatives exchange purchasing the real stock market?
The problem with gameification is that people will always find a way to cheat the system to their advantage. Ultimately it will be co-opted by narcissists who crave power, just look at home owners associations.
Yeah, it is a highly reductive mindset that allows exploitation facilitated by this very simplication process. Life certainly isn't a game, although you can treat aspects of it as such. Saying it is, is just super reductive and contra-experiential mindset.
Many opinions cum interpretations, some facts.
So in this hour of discussion these supposed billionaires revealed their innermost sexual secrets about getting beaten and tortured?
you can just go straight to the dominatrices. they only speak off record, but they speak. oh and epstein's island and crazy eugenics thing was a thing. and he was a huge donor to a large number of intellectuals. even intellectuals that you can have respect for. don't be so literal minded.
don't cars very much outrun their own exhaust?
good talk tho
I like a lot of this, but as an educator - he clearly does not understand how children learn things like how to read. It always rubs me when people make large proclamations about things they know little about like this and makes me question the rest of his statements.
Estamos próximo de precipício kkkkk🌏🌍🤣🤣
Lets say that I was one of the Lawnmower workers living on that block and then I got laidoff because of lacking of sales due to communal lawnmowers? That is a problem spreading out of the balance sheet. The problem with guys like the speaker is that they have great paper and heart ideas, but not practical.
Timothy Leary was really a nutcase. His value was real, but it seems to me to have been about removing the blinders from people, either with drugs or with ideas. But his ideas were so corny.
But is any of this even true ? Did he really meet with billionaires and discuss this ?
Maybe it's all bs to sell books.
Yeah, those rich folks aren't well
Hell, they ain't even medium
Downey promande security officers can not act or save you from violence or crime all they can do is call Downey police. What kind of job is that.. Reminds me of tech industry and reality is a hole different thing, its nature it is it.. Downey California
My problem with his generalization of science is the fact that; the Greek Philosophers like Socrates were living in a society where, the emotion driven political language of rhetoric in which whoever influenced the audience the most was considered thw one who had the truth, meant there was no way of determining that which is true from that which is false. Socrates created Logic which is a system for determining actual truths from that which isn't true. The segment of science he speaks of in this talk are corporate scientists; like those hired by big oil, big tobacco, and the NRA.
The problem with organized religion/speiritialality is the same as the Billionaee Bros; as it was organized religion that gave humanity dominion over all animal life, rather than as something to protect and enrich.
Also, a reaction of Religious Thinkers who saw this philosophy of logic as a threat, was to deny reality by denying our scenes. Furthermore, living rhis life for the sake of a supposid afterlife/reincarnation is no different than living it for the promise of some digital wonderland. I see the Billionare Bros Mindaet as a simple extension of the Religious one; which all too often sees this life as simply a waiting point before the afterlife/digital paradise.
If we look at politics and organized Religion today; they are all too often coiled around one another, opreasing the masses, denying individuals and grouos their rights, just as it was during the Dark Ages
The problem with Religion/Spirituality is much like the Billionaire Bros mentality which labels someone as somehow endowed with special traits due to the family/wealth they are born into; which is used as a tool to take advantage of our rigged system, which is seen in the 6 times hires chances of getting into an Ivy League school if one's parents and or grandparents went there. Likewise, Spirituality and organized religion labels people as somehow having unique access to special knowledge; like so many supposed financial gurus. Both the Billionaire Bros mentality and Religious/Spiritual mentality divides society by placing a nonexistent wall between those with knowledge and those who don't. What Douglas gets very wrong is; public education wasn't intended to empower and educate the masses, it began as an exclusive resource for the families who were in power to help them develop the skills and knowledge needed to maintain their family's position in society. Mass public education came about as towns became too large for a town crier and empires too large to pass in information from the church and political power in a timely manner. The printing press was intended to only spread organized religion and its dogma, until it fell into the hands of those who didn't share this agenda.
As some have pointed out; organized religion can make ordinarily decent humans do the most horrendous deeds, which I would add is the same problem with the power of politics; which we are seeing in the growing authoritarianism and fascism growing in America and elsewhere in the world.
Douglas fails to understand how ending energy scarcity can transform society; only through mass production does the cost of a technology decrease as its power increases.
The argument I hear from folks like Douglas is against large scale production; however if humanity still relied on horses for transportation and wood burning, whale oil for lighting, etc, our environment would have died a long time ago. As technology has advanced the quality of life for a greater and greater portion of humanity has increased. Today, we have a higher quality of life than even the Royalty during the middle ages, who lived in drafty castles and were as prone to disease as the poorest in their society.
Abundant energy will enable us to have vertical farms that use far less land, water, and energy, than traditional farms without the risk of runoff from livestock farms causing outbreaks of e-coli and other diseases, while lab grown meat and dairy using the same yeast process for producing human insulin to produce meat and dairy without needing to exploit animals while using far less water, energy, and power, while being far safer.
Soon, humanity will be able to extract resources from the Moon, Mars, and beyond, ending the need to extract them from our planet, ending damaging our environment.
The best part of A.I., automation, and the things I have mentioned is; it is these technologies that will end the Billionaire Bros Mindset as, they will enable humanity to live in balance with nature, bring the cost of production, energy, food, etc, down to nearly zero, while providing clean water, abundant food, cheap housing, etc, thus making the concept of money and wealth obsolete.
This is the next natural step for a society at our level of technological development as; the sheer scale of colonizing the Moon, Mars, and beyond, and the ever increasing speed of scientific and technological development would only be gendered by the bureaucracy of traditional corporations, governments, economies, etc.
The masses used to mostly work in agriculture, then the service industry, etc, where physical labor was what mattered; as humanity enters the tech singularity highly educated and highly skilled workers will become what is valued. At this point the advantage of high numbers of poor and homeless to keep wages deflated will end; as the true costs of economic disparity, unequal access to a quality education, unaffordability of a higher education and quality healthcare will be seen as an impediment to competing with other nations.
The benefits of shorter work weeks, more paid time off, a livable wage, etc, will benefit productivity of mental based work. Humanity has a strong history of exploration, of taming newly found contacts, etc, the tech singularity will feed the need for individuality while feeding the need to be part of society.
No sympathy for these "Bros", even if they are young. We're talking basic morality here. They jnew every step of the way whst they were doing. And now that they are older. They're still doing it, so age wasn't the problem.
"jnew" is a great word. Wish I had thought of it!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Climate change, as important as it is, is small in comparison to what created it: Fossil fuels and how we most likely reached peak oil in 2018. Simply said, fossil fuels are coming to an end. No solid plans have been made to transition Smoothly into other energy types; and those energy types at scale, solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal etc will not give us what fossil fuels did. Even strip mining the planet for needed minerals at scale for this transition is impossible and yes requires fossil fuels to produce the mining and industrial processes. This and climate change together never seem to make it into the discussion.
I'm not sure a fine arts grad should be lecturing on the faults of science, religion, or materialism vs spiritualism as he strays from the topic. Science, over time, is self correcting & we clearly know more about our world because of science, whereas many religions are founded on the idea that ancient concepts should not be questioned. His thoughts on consciousness are baffling: loss of consciousness is often directly linked to physical trauma, specifically head trauma, & physical brain injury often results in a decline in motor skills & cognitive ability; so does he actually believe that consciousness is separable from the complexity of brain neurons? Spoken like someone with no background in neuroscience.
He has no background in science; so he doesn't understand the various forms of induction such as inductive and deductive reasoning, and how they help us determine the truth.
you guys have been complicit in murder-
Is Ruskkoff 4 feet tall? He looks dwarfish.
He literally said the same thing, word for word, in his interview with “The Majority Report” from June 17th, 2023. But, with less enthusiasm than this talk.
Capitalism sucks. But buy my book. 😂
Haha you're a 🤡
You can't not play the game. That's one of the problems.
@vech Your argument is a logical fallacy.
Sounds like a lot of armchair nonsense to me. A string of shower thoughts presented time and time again. Some interesting insights into a few topics but otherwise unoriginal musings. 6/10. Mostly another fast talker with neato burrito anecdotes and a handful of regurgitated ideas.
I wonder if he has the Lord Jesus Christ as his saviour?
Probably a very interesting book but I'm going to pass because I just don't respect the rich and their escape fantasies. All about ego on the back of greed and irresponsibility.
The book makes fun of these people; it's not about respecting them!
Listen to this is a waste of time
Explain
Reading your comment is a waste of time...
Your negativism is, everything is a proces, we need to inform, we need to educate ppl
The global elites living in LA LA LAND FANTASY ISLAND
@michael djarmotsky Yeah but they are not the only ones anymore.
Not for long. Time for them to reap what they sow.
So he admits he is a Marxist media specialist? So no need to listen to him after that statement. Who says he has the right to talk about the correct reality of the world. What id e invent to make the world better? Not the smart phone.
Smart phones do not make the world better.
At no point did Douglas sound more rational than the people he is describing. I'm sorry Douglas, of you had a point to make couldn't you have presented a more neutral and scientific exposition rather than this sensationalistic ranting against philosophies that offend you? Given my own politics (for instance I often enjoy George Monbiot's writing) I expected to be intrigued by the content and sympathetic to Douglas' view- but this is 1hr of unhinged drivel that nobody should listen to uncritically. Is it sincere or all just to sell his book I cannot tell?!