Douglas Rushkoff's Blog, page 4

Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires

We always knew but now we know. The tech elite mean to leave us all behind.

I learned this when I traveled to a remote resort to deliver was supposed to be a talk for a group of tech investors. It turned out to be something of a “consult” to five ultra-wealthy men on their apocalypse survival strategies.

The experience led to a much-circulated piece here on Medium and an option for a movie. But it also set me off on a multi-year journey to understand “The Mindset” leading the wealthy to believe that as long they have enough money and the right technology, they can break the laws of physics, economics and morality to escape a disaster of their own making. They are preparing for a digital future that has less to do with making the world a better place than transcending the human condition altogether.

Read more from, Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires, on Medium.

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Rise to the Occasion

Sometimes it’s hard to write into the news cycle. I don’t like to write hot takes on things, no matter how closely related they may be to my areas of expertise. I didn’t even write about Elon Musk’s proposed purchase of Twitter because, well, I don’t really care.

Not when people in Ukraine are getting massacred, democracy is in peril, America has passed one million Covid deaths, the climate is ignored, a special bird in Hawaii went extinct, a big chunk of glacier broke off the ice cap, teen suicide is skyrocketing, New Mexico burns, and — oh yes — Roe V Wade is about to be overturned, making abortion illegal in majority of US states.

Read more from, Rise to the Occasion, on Medium,

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Team Human ep. 208: Neşe Devenot and David Nickles

Postdoctoral Associate at the Institute for Research in Sensing (IRiS) at the University of Cincinnati Neşe Devenot and Managing Editor of Psymposia David Nickles help us evaluate the current psychedelic renaissance, as well as those who may be abusing the power unleashed by the substances.

In his monologue, Rushkoff discusses how psychedelics, like everything else, are political.

Read a written version of Rushkoff’s monologue, Avoiding the Power Trip, on Medium.

Listen to Cover Story: Power Trip from New York Magazine.

Click here to stream Team Human.

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Avoiding the Power Trip

I was a member of the psychedelic counterculture in the 1980s when pretty much every mind-expanding substance was illegal. For us, that illegality was just an obstacle. Taking a psychedelic or growing a marijuana plant was not considered a stand against a draconian legal system and repressive government but simply a way of getting what we wanted in spite of a draconian legal system and repressive government.

Many of us who witnessed the very end of the Sixties and the eventual sell-out of the yuppies, gave up on politics and revolution. The hippies became Bill Clinton, who seemed to us just another version of Ronald Reagan. No, the object of the game for us was to be like the people in Richard Linklater’s movie Slacker. Earn enough money to pay for food and rent so you can spend your time reading philosophy, hanging out with friends, and doing trippy things. I remember Timothy Leary once telling us not to invite a particularly ardent leftist to a party at his house because “Marxists don’t know how to have fun.” He didn’t want his acid trip overly inflected by the oppression of the proletariat, because he believed that Marxism was inherently “anti-psychedelic.”

Read more from, Avoiding the Power Trip, on Medium.

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Program or Be Programmed

As media theorist John Culkin first observed, we shape our technologies at the moment of their conception, but from that point forward they shape us. We humans designed the telephone, but from then on the telephone influenced how we communicated, conducted business, and conceived of the world. We also invented the automobile, but then rebuilt our cities around automotive travel and our geopolitics around fossil fuels.

Read more from, Program or Be Programmed, on Medium.

 

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Team Human ep. 207: Hannah Close

Writer, researcher, and curator at Advaya Hannah Close helps to bring us from mere reciprocity to true kinship.

In his monologue, Rushkoff discusses how haggling holds us all together.

Read a written version of Rushkoff’s monologue, The Fabric of Society, on Medium.

Click here to stream Team Human.

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Beyond Pranks, Satire, and Sensemaking

I have always been a fan of fake news. I don’t mean the kind that we see in today’s disinformation campaigns on Facebook and Twitter. It’s the work of 1960’s pranksters such as Paul Krassner, Abbie Hoffman, or Robert Anton Wilson and the Discordians that I always admired. That tradition has been carried on well to this day by fabulous media activists including my friends with the YesMen, Adbusters, Ubermorgen, and the Birds aren’t Real movement (who contend that the CIA has replaced all real birds with spy drones).

Read more from, Beyond Pranks, Satire, and Sensemaking, on Medium.

 

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Yearning for Proof

I’ve made no secret of my skepticism about the blockchain as a solution for our economic woes. Yes, the economy is tilted, corrupt, and easily gamed — but the solution is likely social, not technological. While national, debt-based central currencies create terrible incentives, abstractions, and growth mandates, moving our transactions to a decentralized ledger maintained by wealthy hackers may not truly be any better. And most people know this, deep down.

Read more from, Yearning for Proof, on Medium.

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Team Human ep. 206: Ari Wallach

Founder and Director of Longpath and author of the upcoming book, Longpath: Becoming the Great Ancestors Our Future Needs, Ari Wallach discusses the fundamentally human need to belong, and how it will determine our collective chances for survival.

In his monologue, Rushkoff stakes his future on the solidarity of the people over the cynicism of the elite.

You can read Rushkoff’s monologue, Open Up: The Refugees are Coming, on Medium.

Click here to stream Team Human.

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Team Human ep. 201: Divya Siddarth

Political economist and social technologist at Microsoft, and a researcher at the RadicalxChange Foundation, Divya Siddarth introduces us to the Pluriverse and challenges us to consider just how many worlds are possible.

In his monologue, Rushkoff reminds us that our happiness does not need to be tied to our aspirations.

Read A Declaration of the Interdependence of Cyberspace

Keep up with Divya:
Twitter | RadicalxChange Foundation

Click here to stream Team Human.

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