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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Man, Welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with

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Speaker 2: Douglas Rushcoff. Douglas, the title of your book, Survival of

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Speaker 2: the Riches about tech billionaires. Tell me about that.

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Speaker 3: Well, it's strange, you know. I mean, I'm some kind

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Speaker 3: of you know, tech and society experts. So I get

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Speaker 3: called in for lots of things. I've been right about

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Speaker 3: a ton of stuff. I'm not in business, but you know,

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Speaker 3: I got my ear to the tracks and know the

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Speaker 3: future in some ways. So I get invited to do

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Speaker 3: these talks, usually kind of about the future of technology,

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Speaker 3: the future of digital business. And I thought I was

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Speaker 3: getting invited to another one of those, and I don't

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Speaker 3: even like doing them, but they offered so much money

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Speaker 3: that I agreed, and they flew me out business class

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Speaker 3: to this resort, way way way out in the desert.

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Speaker 3: It was so far that my plane was like it

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Speaker 3: was like a two or three hours drive from my

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Speaker 3: airport to this resort. But the resort had this like

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Speaker 3: landing strip to it where the guys are landing in

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Speaker 3: their G fives and all. So it was an exclusive

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Speaker 3: kind of event, and I really prepared because I wanted

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Speaker 3: to tell them what was wrong with the tech industry

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Speaker 3: and what they're doing and all. And I'm waiting in

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Speaker 3: the green room to go on to do the talk,

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Speaker 3: and you know, I'm waiting for the guy. You know

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Speaker 3: how they come out with the usually with a little

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Speaker 3: clip on microphone and stuff.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Well, five guys come in in the in these like

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Speaker 3: Patagonia kind of flee shirts and they sit around the

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Speaker 3: table where I'm getting ready, and that's my audience. It's

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Speaker 3: just five tech billionaires, well a couple of you know,

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Speaker 3: tech investors, but basically five tech billionaires who were peppering

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Speaker 3: me with these really kind of yes or no binary questions.

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Speaker 3: They don't want to hear my talk. They're like, first,

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Speaker 3: they're like, you know, what do we invest in virtual

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Speaker 3: reality or augmented reality or you know, bitcoin or etherium?

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Speaker 3: And I'm not the guy to ask that, right, I

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Speaker 3: would have said Beta Max, right, you know, videotape with

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Speaker 3: coming from people who don't know Beta Max was the alternative.

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Speaker 2: Format Blockbuster stock right.

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Speaker 3: Exactly, Blockbuster compu serve. Right, I'm right, but I'm wrong, right,

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Speaker 3: I'm right in the idea, but I got to pick

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Speaker 3: the right business, which is fine. But then so they're

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Speaker 3: going back and forth with all these questions, and finally

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Speaker 3: one of them says, Alaska or New Zealand, And I'm

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Speaker 3: like what. They's like, what's the better place for a bunker,

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Speaker 3: given you know, climate change and pandemics, possible nuclear problems,

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Speaker 3: economic unrest, refugee crisis, what's the safer place safer bet overall?

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Speaker 3: And they wanted advice about their bunkers right, about their

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Speaker 3: survival strategies. They were all preparing for what they called

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Speaker 3: the event, right, the electromagnetic poles or nuclear war or

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Speaker 3: climate change or pandemic that renders the earth unlivable and

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Speaker 3: forces them to retreat either into a bunker or to

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Speaker 3: upload their consciousness to the cloud or to go you know,

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Speaker 3: seasteading out in the ocean, or to get to Mars,

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Speaker 3: or to become an ai And I'm like, oh my god, really,

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Speaker 3: you know, so I entertained their idea for a while.

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Speaker 3: The cat thought they were joking, and one of them

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Speaker 3: pulled out plans for his his his bunker that he

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Speaker 3: was building, and I'm looking, there's like a heated pool

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Speaker 3: under the ground, these shipping containers he's gonna put under

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Speaker 3: the ground. And I'm I say, uh, you know, my

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Speaker 3: neighbor's got a heated pull and there's a truck out

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Speaker 3: there all the time, you know, all the parts keep going.

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Speaker 3: How are you going to make new parts for your

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Speaker 3: heated pool in the apocalypse? And he opens his little

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Speaker 3: moleskin book and he writes, oh, you know, parts for

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Speaker 3: the pool, like like he hadn't thought of it. And

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Speaker 3: finally I'm asking them, how are you if you've got

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Speaker 3: these bunkers and the rest of us don't, how are

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Speaker 3: you going to protect yourself from the rest of us?

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Speaker 3: And one of them said, oh, you know, I've hired

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Speaker 3: you know, a dozen navy heels to come out and

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Speaker 3: protect the facility, you know, in the in the event

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Speaker 3: of a crisis. They're like waiting, you know, they've got

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Speaker 3: you know, fully fueled helicopters and they'll be there in

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Speaker 3: an instant. And like, all right, so you've got navy

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Speaker 3: seals in your apocalypse bunker compound, you know, And how

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Speaker 3: exactly are you going to pay your navy seals to

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Speaker 3: protect you once your money is worthless? And then for

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Speaker 3: their jaws drop like these are the smartest guys in

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Speaker 3: the world. They hadn't even thought of this. I'm like, hey,

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Speaker 3: your bitcoin, your gript that is not going to be

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Speaker 3: worth anything if society collapses, Why aren't they just going

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Speaker 3: to take over the whole place from you? And then

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Speaker 3: they spend the whole next hour they're just debating what

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Speaker 3: could they do to maintain control of their security force.

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Speaker 3: So one of them says, well, you know what if

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Speaker 3: I'm the only guy that knows the combinations of the

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Speaker 3: lock where we keep the food, It's like, oh, well,

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Speaker 3: Navy seals don't have any experience getting information out of people, right,

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Speaker 3: you're going to spend.

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Speaker 2: The billionaires Douglas thinking long term or short term?

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Speaker 3: Well, it's odd. On the one hand, they're thinking long term,

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Speaker 3: right because they think they're thinking out beyond the repercussions

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Speaker 3: of their technologies. They know they screwed it up. They

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Speaker 3: know their technologies are making people crazy. You know, they

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Speaker 3: they know where they're the resources, They understand or they

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Speaker 3: understand that there's a great probability of bad stuff happening.

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Speaker 3: You know, the Nation States are weird. So they're thinking long,

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Speaker 3: longer term than most of us, and that they're looking ahead,

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Speaker 3: you know, ten twenty years to what they think is

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Speaker 3: going to be the collapse. But they're not thinking genuinely

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Speaker 3: long term. If you talk to any true, self respecting prepper,

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Speaker 3: what's the first thing they're going to say is get

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Speaker 3: your neighbors prepared, right, you don't want to be alone prepper.

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Speaker 3: The first thing any self respecting prepper does is make

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Speaker 3: sure every neighbor on his block has food and water

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Speaker 3: and protection. So because we're gonna need them, right, you're

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Speaker 3: gonna come like that Twilight Zone. You know, what's.

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Speaker 2: The shelter?

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Speaker 3: Remember that the shelter exactly? It's like, haven't me watched that?

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Speaker 3: But they they think, and this is their their hubris, right,

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Speaker 3: they're tech bros, they're billionaires. They think they can go

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Speaker 3: it alone. They think that they're gonna be the one,

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Speaker 3: you know, to get to Mars and have a dome.

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Speaker 3: They're gonna be the one who has You know, Mark

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Speaker 3: Zuckerberg's got his place in Hawaii, Peter to as his

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Speaker 3: in New Zealand. You know that somehow they're gonna keep

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Speaker 3: the rest of us out. Somehow the virus isn't gonna

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Speaker 3: get in there. Somehow the contaminated water or the electromagnetic

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Speaker 3: pulse or whatever it is that they're afraid of. Somehow

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Speaker 3: they're gonna think their way out of it. They've got

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Speaker 3: you know, the techno technological solution. But you know, for me,

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Speaker 3: what it revealed was these guys this this this tech

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Speaker 3: bro mentality where they think they can earn enough money

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Speaker 3: to insulate themselves from the reality they're creating by earning

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Speaker 3: money in that way, right, Like they can make a

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Speaker 3: car that goes fast enough to escape from its own

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Speaker 3: exhaust and it just doesn't work like that.

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Speaker 2: And do they think of the ramifications of what happens afterwards.

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Speaker 3: That's the hard part, you know. I don't think they

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Speaker 3: really do. They think they're gonna somehow sort of wait

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Speaker 3: it out that waited out fifty years or one hundred years.

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Speaker 3: I don't think. I don't think any of them are

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Speaker 3: really thinking that they're going to get into their shelter

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Speaker 3: and live there forever, that that's the new civilization wants to. Well,

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Speaker 3: I think a lot of them want to. A lot

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Speaker 3: of there's a there's a whole movement, you know, their

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Speaker 3: their version of long termism or what they call you know,

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Speaker 3: effective altruism and effective acceleration. They have all these names

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Speaker 3: for it. It's it's really a version of transhumanism, but

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Speaker 3: a very dark one where they think that that all

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Speaker 3: of us regular people are regular, squishy, pink and brown

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Speaker 3: human beings on the planet, we're like the larval stage,

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Speaker 3: you know, like the maggot stage of a fly, and

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Speaker 3: that they are the ones who are actually going to

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Speaker 3: get to the next phase of human evolution. They're going

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Speaker 3: to get you know, whatever those virtual wings are that

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Speaker 3: let them upload their consciousness into the cloud and live

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Speaker 3: on a computer, on a satellite or you know, spawn

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Speaker 3: as robots when they get to another planet, that somehow

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Speaker 3: that they're going to transcend this human existence and become

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Speaker 3: posthuman or transhuman. And when they look at the problems

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Speaker 3: on the planet, when they look at whether it's you know,

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Speaker 3: climate or pollution, or economics or social unrest, they think

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Speaker 3: these are the signs that it's time for them to

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Speaker 3: make their break, to get to the next place. And

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Speaker 3: they just talk about the positive parts of their technology.

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Speaker 3: You gotta do it. We all got to get this stuff.

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Speaker 3: We all got to go get online, do this, do that,

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Speaker 3: and fill the AI. And that's really their plan is

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Speaker 3: not for these these technologies to serve us. These technologies

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Speaker 3: are for them to get away from us. All of

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Speaker 3: their plans. Really they leave us behind.

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Speaker 2: What are they concerned about, Douglas. Why do they think

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Speaker 2: something drastic could happen?

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Speaker 3: I mean, I guess they look at you know, they

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Speaker 3: look at the climate maps put out by the the

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Speaker 3: you know, the World Bank, and they say, oh, look,

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Speaker 3: you know it's going to raise another twenty thirty degrees

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Speaker 3: or whatever. The only place is you're going to move north.

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Speaker 3: I was talking to some guys who's starting a hedge

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Speaker 3: fund where they're selling land in Siberia and very northern

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Speaker 3: Canada is the main thing, because that they think is

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Speaker 3: the only place.

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Speaker 2: We used to joke about that.

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Speaker 3: We used to joke about it. My grandfather used to

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Speaker 3: joke about selling water. He goes, Doug, this is you know,

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Speaker 3: the sixties, that if you can figure out a way

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Speaker 3: to sell water to people, you're gonna be a millionaire,

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Speaker 3: right because we just got it out of the cap.

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Speaker 3: Nobody got it out of the bottle.

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Speaker 2: The Eskimos, remember that, Yes.

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Speaker 3: That's it, But now it's you know, I don't know

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Speaker 3: what life to the people, but they're also you know,

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Speaker 3: part of it is that they're afraid, right, they're afraid

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Speaker 3: of people. They've been afraid of people for these these

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Speaker 3: kind of guys, they've been afraid of people for a

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Speaker 3: thousand years. You know. This is the invention of empirical science.

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Speaker 3: While it's great to learn cause and effect, repeatable science

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Speaker 3: and hypotheses and all that. When Francis Bacon, really the

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Speaker 3: father of empirical science, in the in the you know,

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Speaker 3: fifteen hundreds, when he was arguing for it, he said,

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Speaker 3: it's gonna let us take nature by the forelock, hold

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Speaker 3: her down, and submit her to our will. Right. That

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Speaker 3: is their idea that they have a fantasy of control.

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Speaker 3: Nature is like this woman, this scary woman, that they

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Speaker 3: have to control with their logic and their technology because

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Speaker 3: they're afraid of real life. The other thing is they

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Speaker 3: they they don't really believe that we have souls. They

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Speaker 3: don't really believe they're they're so staunchly.

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Speaker 2: Do they care if we even do.

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Speaker 3: Well, if they if we did, they wouldn't believe it.

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Speaker 3: They really think that we're just genes, you know, that

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Speaker 3: we're just genetics following our program. And so that's all

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Speaker 3: they want to do is be the program that gets

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Speaker 3: you know, that gets copied. You know that, you know,

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Speaker 3: Alon Musk has children all over the place. It's to

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Speaker 3: get their DNA out and to move their DNA to

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Speaker 3: the next place. They don't really think there's anything going

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Speaker 3: on here there. They get their pleasure kind of by

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Speaker 3: being by thinking of themselves as dictators. Even Mark Zuckerberg,

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Speaker 3: the head of a Facebook, his fantasy is that he's

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Speaker 3: Augustus Caesar. That's his thing. I mean, that's when when

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Speaker 3: he went on his honeymoon, all he wanted to learn

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Speaker 3: about was Augustus Caesar. And I'm glad it's not Caligula,

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Speaker 3: but it's a Roman dictator. It's still this idea of

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Speaker 3: little control kind of gives them a feeling of pleasure.

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Speaker 3: They look at our world like a video game, and

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Speaker 3: they want to be the ones. They want to be

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Speaker 3: the ones playing it from above.

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Speaker 2: How do they look at usus, I mean they.

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Speaker 3: Look at us as sad, superstitious, little stupid people. They

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Speaker 3: look at most of humanity like kind of like the

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Speaker 3: iron shavings that are, you know, moving back and forth

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Speaker 3: between magnets, Like they're the magnets, they're the avengers, they're

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Speaker 3: the superheroes. They see themselves like Greek gods. They even

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Speaker 3: they're even building a city, you know, they want to

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Speaker 3: build a city outside San Francisco with perfect you know, renewable,

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Speaker 3: perfect high tech city. They got another one they want

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Speaker 3: to build down in Saudi Arabia called Neo you know.

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Speaker 3: And these are like they're they're sort of man made olympus.

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Speaker 3: They want to build for themselves to go be superheroes.

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Speaker 3: You see Elon Muskin and Mark Zucker are arguing on

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Speaker 3: the net, challenging each other to a cage match. Right,

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Speaker 3: it's nuts, right, But they see themselves as the supermansh

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Speaker 3: is what is what the philosophers would call it, the

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Speaker 3: superman and us mere mortals. We're mortal, We're gonna die,

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Speaker 3: you know, we're just people. You know, we've got our religion,

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Speaker 3: maybe our wives and their kids and whatever. But they

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Speaker 3: see themselves as you know, the techno gods, the heroes

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Speaker 3: who will somehow, one way or another, live forever. That's

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Speaker 3: their goal. That's why you know, there's there's a guy

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Speaker 3: at Google, Ray Kurzweld giants, yeah, giants smarter than us. Right,

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Speaker 3: He's a smart guy. He believes that he before he dies,

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Speaker 3: is going to upload his mind to the computer. You know.

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Speaker 3: That's what the kid at open Ai, Sam Altman, he

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Speaker 3: believes he's going to be able to upload his consciousness.

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Speaker 3: That's the goal. They want to live forever because cryogenics, yeah,

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Speaker 3: biogenics and some of these things are interesting. I remember,

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Speaker 3: you know, Timothy Leary wanted to originally freeze himself so

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Speaker 3: he could reanimate, and then shortly before he died, I

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Speaker 3: was actually there. The guys came with the clipboards to

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Speaker 3: take the measurements and get all the specifics because he

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Speaker 3: was going to die soon. And then as soon as

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Speaker 3: they left the house, he was like, can't tell it

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Speaker 3: right away. I don't want to wake up and see

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Speaker 3: a bunch of guys like that.

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Speaker 2: That's what life would be.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yep, it's a different kind of the life. They

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Speaker 3: don't like the messiness of our world. They like, you know,

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Speaker 3: they like auto tuning. You know how people can you

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Speaker 3: can autotune as singers so they hit exactly the right note,

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Speaker 3: you know, with computers afterwards, and I guess for certain

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Speaker 3: kinds of commercial music that's okay, But imagine if you

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Speaker 3: auto tuned Tina Turner or auto tuned James Brown. You

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Speaker 3: know what makes Tina Tina and James Brown, James Brown.

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Speaker 3: It's the way that they reach up to the note,

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Speaker 3: not hitting the note. It's the reach. It's the reaching

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Speaker 3: to the note or coming down.

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Speaker 2: So they're going to do it with Elvis Presley or

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Speaker 2: Elvis Presley exactly.

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Speaker 3: It's that you don't auto tune. That when you autotune

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Speaker 3: that you are quite literally taking the soul out of

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Speaker 3: the music, the humanity out of the music, in order

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Speaker 3: to get that perfect kind of you know, one zero

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Speaker 3: binary digital clean thing that has no nature, no noise,

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Speaker 3: none of the stuff that the normal people like you

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Speaker 3: or I would say, what, that's what makes life worth living.

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Speaker 2: If it were up to you, Douglas, and you had

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Speaker 2: the right to push artificial intelligence forward or stop it,

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Speaker 2: what would you do?

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Speaker 3: I would I would slow it down. If I really could,

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Speaker 3: I would slow it down and require that every AI

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Speaker 3: company has on staff an ethicist, a priest, a rabbi

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Speaker 3: in a mon you know, a native American. You know,

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Speaker 3: people who understand humanity. That's why I called the thing

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Speaker 3: I do at the college. I'm at the you know,

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Speaker 3: the the Laboratory for Digital Humanism you know that if

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Speaker 3: we're gonna use digital technology, we have to center the

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Speaker 3: humans rather than try to correct for humans or worse, uh,

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Speaker 3: transcend the human to get away from the humans. It

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Speaker 3: doesn't work. It's from the Bible. It's babble. You know,

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Speaker 3: it's the only story. You stop. You can't do it.

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Speaker 3: That the real the party's going on down here. The

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Speaker 3: party is, you know, right on this, right on this planet.

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Speaker 3: You know, you don't you don't need to get off that,

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Speaker 3: and you certainly don't want to make this a place

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Speaker 3: where you have to get off the planet, you know,

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Speaker 3: before it's too late.

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