Bunker, Mars colony, or seastead?

Have you ever wondered why the Silicon Valley oligarchs seem so obsessed with preparing for the end of the world? In our first episode of 2023, we join media theorist Douglas Rushkoff on an epic journey through the universe of million-dollar bunkers, libertarian island micronations, and hypothetical Mars colonies to explore why they want to get away from us so badly when the apocalypse hits — and what this says about the consequences their business practices and technologies are having on the world right now. 

As a professor at Queens College and the author of 20 books spanning everything from early cyberculture to alternative currencies, Rushkoff has a knack for putting words to the abstract forces that govern our online lives. In fact, he’s the guy who popularized concepts like “viral media” and “social currency.” In this new book, Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires, he turns his attention to something he is calling “the Mindset.” “[It’s] this kind of tech-billionaire belief that with enough money and technology, they can escape the catastrophes that result from their own acquisition of money and use of technology,” he says. “It’s the belief that humanity is a problem that can be solved with technology.”

We trace the roots of this worldview back past the “Californian Ideology” of the 90s dot-com bubble to the dawn of interest-backed currencies and the rise of scientism in the era of Francis Bacon; hear a fun story about Timothy Leary and his theory that tech bros are using technology to recreate the experience of the womb; and discuss why letting go of our societal obsession with economic growth may be the only way to resist the Mindset and its extractive impact on labor, communities, and the environment. It’s a hopeful conversation, too — at the end of our time together, Rushkoff discusses what living one’s life in opposition to the technocapitalist status quo might look like.  

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