Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
creator(s): Douglas Rushkoff |
medium(s): book | audiobook |
date reviewed: 2 December 2024
rating: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Cory Doctorow’s review of Naomi Alderman’s The Future mentioned this book, so after wrapping up the former, I decided to start the latter. It’s not what I expected—Doctorow’s comments suggested the whole thing might be about billionaire survivalist bunkers—but in a good way! It turns out that it’s a broader take on a broader attitude behind survivalist bunkers and the way that attitude manifests in other ways.
I had a hard time deciding on a rating for this. I do have some issues with the book, including its appeals to neuroscience (which is always a pet peeve of mine) in a book that otherwise has a productive skepticism toward empiricism as the end all, be all of human discovery. I’m also intrigued by Rushkoff’s critiques of how we approach social justice but I could use some more elaboration on those critiques so that they don’t just come off as contrarian (to be clear, I don’t think Rushkoff’s writing in bad faith, but there’s enough superficial resemblance to bad faith critiques from other actors that I’d like to see him elaborate more).
Despite those hang-ups, I went ahead and gave the book full marks because it lays out a compelling attitude and philosophy, encouraging the reader to reject “The Mindset” of competition, inevitability, and disconnect in favor of mutual aid, deeper values, and a shared future. There’s a lot to this book, and it may be worth getting a copy for my bookshelf one day.
- Survival of the Richest
- Douglas Rushkoff
- audiobooks
- Cory Doctorow
- The Future
- Naomi Alderman
- mutual aid
- empiricism
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📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for The Future, by Naomi Alderman
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I expected Naomi Alderman’s The Future to be good, but I didn’t expect an interesting, responsible reading of the destruction of Sodom to be a throughline of the story.
Okay, my new favorite fun fact about myself for ice breaking activities is that Wil Wheaton has read my name aloud as part of his recording of a Cory Doctorow audiobook.
🔗 linkblog: Pluralistic: The surprising truth about data-driven dictatorships (26 July 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow'
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