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TODAY. The rise of the  Übermensch  – the tech gods

 Douglas Rushkoff ,in his new book  Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires,  alerts us to this disturbing phenomenon of our decade – the influence of those super-wealthy individuals – Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg,  Sam Altman, Peter Thiel.

Rushkoff explains the extraordinary breadth and power of these men. – “Musk not only owns X and Tesla but also SpaceX, StarLink, the Boring Company, Solar City, NeuraLink, xAI, and someday, he hopes, another finance company like PayPal”  “Bezos doesn’t just control Amazon – but the Washington Post, IMDb, MGM, Twitch, Zoox, Kiva, Whole Foods, Ring, Ivona, One Medical, Blue Origin and, of course, Amazon Web Services”  “Gates 20bn dollars’ worth of Microsoft stock and assets are Microsoft Azure (his 23% of the cloud), LinkedIn, Skype and GitHub.” 

The really worrying thing is that these individuals think that they are experts on everything, and the world seems to be believing this.

Their individual expertise is in each case, in some form of advanced technology. Yet in fact, it is apparent that they are woefully ignorant of just about everything else that really matters. They have no interest in ecology – in the web of life that exists on this planet, and which is essential for human survival. Nor do they have any grasp of the significance of workplace conditions - consider the exploitation of Bezos’ Amazon workers. And they show no understanding of the environmental effects of the tech resource boom.

Yet their fantasies for the future seem to be accepted as realistic propositions: colonies on Mars and the moon,  “doomsday” escape settlements, uploading a person’s consciousness to “the cloud”. So media coverage and tax-payers money go to approving and encouraging their schemes.

The part of all this that I find particularly sinister and dangerous is the complete downgrading of studies and expertise that are not highly technical. Studies in ecology, public health, sociology, history, culture and the arts. 

We are marvelling at the “genius”, the “success” – of these lop-sided “experts” - all of whom seem to be significantly lacking in common sense. We follow them at our peril .

December 28, 2023 - Posted by | Christina's notes

1 Comment »

  1. This book reminds of the good old “Golden Rule”: “Them that has the gold, write the rules.” It hasn’t changed since the days of Kings & Queens, and the rise of fascism. In the words of my high school history teacher,Myron Feinstein: “Money talks, B.S. walks and the rest of us are all running (a very distant) third.” This is what billionaires and oligarchs do, try to control things, not just their businesses but the government that imposes, “burdensome regulations,” and “burdensome taxes,” on them & the companies, interfering with their sacred and holy almighty profits. How much profit is enough for these “greed addicts?” Never enough, just like King Midas. “Growth, for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell.” Eventually the cancer, kills its host. There are “limits to growth.” The Earth doesn’t have unlimited resources, and you can’t keep dumping & polluting the Earth’s Life Support Systems and destroy “Spaceship Earth.” “Nature, bats last.”

    Comment by paulrodenlearning | December 28, 2023 | Reply


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