Why the tech billionaires can t save themselves HEAD TOPICS
Why the tech billionaires can t save themselves
10/21/2022 3:09:00 PM This is what happened when a bunch of billionaires asked futurist Douglas Rushkoff to advise them on how to survive societal collapse
Source Popular Science
We spoke with preeminent digital culture theorist Douglas Rushkoff on desert retreats, pool maintenance, and his new book, 'Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires.' This is what happened when a bunch of billionaires asked futurist Douglas Rushkoff to advise them on how to survive societal collapse In fact, luxury escape shelters are such a hot market that there now exists anThese will be the best places to live in America in 2100He calls their gamble the Insulation Equation: How much money and technology do these guys need to save them from a world they are actively destroying using said money and technology? The (somewhat obvious) problem, Rushkoff argues, is that their solutions are just reiterations of what got society here in the first place: their “disrupt the market” and grow infinitely mindset, resources and humanity be damned. Read more:
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Meanwhile, in sports news Astros 3, Yankees 2 This New 178-Foot Trimaran Concept Has Two Tilting Masts So It Can Glide Under BridgesThe nifty 'folding' multihull can get where most other sailing yachts can't. colonizing Mars , or retreating to your very own private, posh tropical paradise doomsday bunker, the supposed visioneers of tomorrow are racing to realize their futureproof disaster preparedness plans before it’s too late.The Peripheral , a scientist is making adjustments to a robot meant to resemble a recently dispatched henchman.Girard-Perregaux ’s Laureato.in an interview published on Tuesday, October 18. “I started out to write a serious, scary book, and then it just became… more of a black comedy when I realized, ‘Oh my God. These guys are laughable,” he says. First, she orders his pitch to be lowered. “I wanted to tell stories about these guys that make them smaller, so that we don’t go down that path,” Rushkoff says.) The Laureato also features an octagonal bezel, but one that sits atop a circular pedestal positioned above a tonneau-shaped case, creating a geometric stack that lends the model an unmistakable touch of modernity. In fact, luxury escape shelters are such a hot market that there now exists an dedicated to catering to wealthy customers’ fears of impending doom. Still not quite right. Unfortunately, it all sounds to Rushkoff like a huge, literal money pit.” While the eight-time Grammy winner has high standards when it comes to fellow musicians, one singer who has served as an inspiration to Underwood throughout her own career is Guns N’ Roses’. [Related: These will be the best places to live in America in 2100 . Perfect. The secret to its popularity, retailers say, is its wearability.] “They don’t really deserve that much attention,” he says with a shrug when asked if any of the escape plans he’s encountered so far sound particularly interesting or viable. “It was clear to me that they were basing their understanding of the future from science fiction books they must have read when they were in high school. “Give half of the characters feigned Southern accents and make the other half British,” you can imagine somebody saying.” He calls their gamble the Insulation Equation: How much money and technology do these guys need to save them from a world they are actively destroying using said money and technology? The (somewhat obvious) problem, Rushkoff argues, is that their solutions are just reiterations of what got society here in the first place: their “disrupt the market” and grow infinitely mindset, resources and humanity be damned. Gabe Reilly, cofounder of California-based collectors’ group Collective Horology , is a new convert, purchasing a steel 42 mm Laureato Chronograph with a black-and-blue dial last December. “So much of technology is used either to push externalities further away from the user, or to hide the externalities,” he says. Not quite right. “If you [realize] ‘Oh, that’s what we’ve been doing,’ then the obvious response is, ‘Let’s look directly at the externalities, rather than continue to hide from them.’” He cites one particular hideout that included a state-of-the-art underground heated swimming pool, complete with a sun-simulating overhead lighting system in their island retreat. Perfect. “There was no calling around, no waitlist, no ‘building a relationship’ or purchase history required. While at his surprise Q&A session in the desert, Rushkoff asked the pool’s billionaire owner how he planned to keep it chlorinated once the global supply chains collapse indefinitely. “The guy takes out his little Moleskine book, and he’s like, ‘Hmm… supplies ,’” Rushkoff remembers. If you are feeling frustrated at the notion that the wealthiest people in the world are this clueless about their escape fantasies, well that’s sort of Rushkoff’s point here.” Three Other Watches Having A Moment in the Spotlight: Girard-Perregaux’s Laureato isn’t the only model seeing a surge in popularity. He explains that one of the main criticisms so far for Survival of the Richest is that he never exactly gets around to telling readers the nitty-gritty details of tech billionaires’ apocalypse survival plans. “‘I thought we were gonna get to the escape plans of these guys?’” he paraphrases. “And it’s like, ‘No. Vacheron Constantin Overseas Vacheron Constantin With roots that go back to 1977 and the introduction of the famed “222,” the best-selling Overseas collection, revamped in 2016, boasts countless coveted iterations, such as this. These are the escape fantasies of these guys… because they all involve separating oneself from everybody and everything else in order to play out.” This willful separation is as futile as it is misguided. Even if many of our most headline-grabbing tech bros truly think they are out here helping humanity, their myopic viewpoints reduce them to “look at our problems, not as science problems, but as engineering problems,” says Rushkoff. [Related: The US ban on hydrofluorocarbons is a climate game-changer .] Instead, we should work to return to utilizing science, not as a means to dominate and “solve” nature, but as a way to coexist with it. Perhaps, even to repair the damage we have done. “Rather than to alienate and isolate people from one another in order to extract time, energy, data and resources from them, we could use technology to make people’s work easier, or even more efficient,” he says. “If the people who are so willing to disrupt this market and that market were willing to disrupt venture capitalism, or willing to disrupt the startup startup model itself, you’d end up with something truly revolutionary,” he says. In the end (so to speak) billions of dollars can only take these guys so far, anyway. “Why do you think they’re gonna protect you after your money is worthless?” Rushkoff remembers asking his billionaire desert hosts of their private security forces. From there, the men began grasping at straws. “At that point, it was shock collars and guard dogs and combinations to the safes,” he says of their last resorts. Andrew Paul Andrew Paul is Popular Science's staff writer covering tech news. Previously, he was a regular contributor to The A.V. Club and Input, and has had recent work also featured by Rolling Stone, Fangoria, GQ, Slate, NBC, as well as McSweeney's Internet Tendency. He lives outside Indianapolis. .