According to a top US health official, Silicon Valley’s tech elites are preparing for « escape mode » in the event of a catastrophic climatic breakdown.
In order to avoid « The Event, » which is code for a catastrophic climate collapse, wealthy tech entrepreneurs are allegedly planning missions to Mars, building island bunkers, or relocating to higher ground, according to Doug Rushkoff, a leading theorist of the digital age and an early cyberpunk. He is also a professor at the City University of New York.
Rushkoff also stated in an interview with The Guardian that the development of a virtual « metaverse » is fulfilling the prophecy that the computer revolution was always about preparing us for a world in which we could no longer leave our homes.
Observations on Silicon Valley’s billionaires are condensed in Rushkoff’s most recent book, Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires.
In the book’s opening pages, he wrote: « For them, the future of technology is about only one thing: escape from the rest of us. » He continued:
“They’ve reduced technological progress to a video game that one of them wins by finding an escape hatch.”
Billions of dollars are being spent by Tech Elites to prepare for environmental collapse
While the concept of escape may appear outlandish, a few Silicon Valley millionaires have proved in recent years how serious they are about avoiding environmental disaster.
Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX and Tesla, and Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, have both proposed populating Mars. Mark Zuckerberg has spent millions on his metaverse ideas, while Peter Thiel has erected his own bunker in New Zealand.
The issue with this conduct, according to Rushkoff, is that it does not and will not work (not to mention how selfish it is). « They’re not going to be able to leave the planet, and they’re not going to live forever. » They’re only fantasizing. He described them as « eugenicists. »
In the view of Rushkoff, the tech barons had opted not to use their innovations to revolutionize society, as their predecessors in the computer industry had done after industry War II, when the US government supported Silicon Valley and businesses like Hewlett-Packard and Fairchild Semiconductor.
Instead, these new tycoons wished to utilize their fortune to accelerate their own escape velocity.
Rushkoff believes that government warnings about technology are too late
Rushkoff also suggested that official warnings concerning technology, such as the new recognition of social media danger to children, are long overdue.
« What happened to the cigarette companies will eventually happen to the social media companies, » he said, alleging that « they’ve had all the research for 20 years, and they’ve been knowingly saying this stuff is not harmful when they know it’s harmful. »
Rushkoff disagrees with the US Surgeon General’s concerns.
« They often come off as controlled, restrained, and in favor of slowing down the wheels of progress. It often comes off with a squeamish, hand-wringing, pearl-clutching tone, » he remarked, adding:
“It’s not that it’s just unattractive. It’s infantilizing and it doesn’t help anybody. I want to become Musk-ian myself at that point. It’s like, ‘Fuck it, fine!’”
Dr. Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General, issued a warning last week on the danger social media may pose to children’s and teenagers’ mental health.
In truth, he claimed, the only way to rebel is via human responsibility and decision, not with the aid of government control.
According to Rushkoff, being human and conscious is the only approach to combat the pervasive technological obstacles and dystopian prospects of the modern world.
He said:
“Be social, get your feet on the ground, make eye contact, have sex, meet people, breathe the air. The more real-life ballast you have, the less brittle, abstracted, ideological, and social media-mediated universe bears upon your daily existence.”
