Silvio Berlusconi supposedly did not want his children to watch his dumbed-down television programs. Steve Jobs did not allow his children to use iPads. The consumption of mass media was meant for the masses, but not for their own children who they wished well. What this reminds us, except that businessmen can be cynical, is that the people who have real power frequently are those who position themselves above society in some sense - above the system. Steve Jobs understood the addictiveness of smartphone technology far earlier than others and Berlusconi seems to have thought regarding his children that they, like he, should be "above" the crude entertainment that he was offering the Italian people. (I am not up-to-date as to what has been going on lately with Berlusconi's media empire, so I content myself with writing in the past tense.) Another example would be Rupert Murdoch: the media mogul par excellence, whose empire of the mind scrutinizes everything while Murdoch himself can choose to remain in the shadows.
I am reminded of this because of a group of articles I recently stumbled upon. The theme was known to me before but it still struck a cord with me more gravely this time. It is the story of how the superrich are building bunkers or buying property in far away countries like New Zealand in order to be able to protect themselves after "the event" - essentially, the apocalypse.
The author of this article, Douglas Rushkoff, describes it all very well. He was invited to speak about "the future of technology" before a group of wealthy businessmen
Which region will be less impacted by the coming climate crisis: New Zealand or Alaska? Is Google really building Ray Kurzweil a home for his brain, and will his consciousness live through the transition, or will it die and be reborn as a whole new one? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system and asked, “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?”
The Event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr. Robot hack that takes everything down.
This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from the angry mobs. But how would they pay the guards once money was worthless? What would stop the guards from choosing their own leader? The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers — if that technology could be developed in time.
That’s when it hit me: At least as far as these gentlemen were concerned, this was a talk about the future of technology. Taking their cue from Elon Musk colonizing Mars, Peter Thiel reversing the aging process, or Sam Altman and Ray Kurzweil uploading their minds into supercomputers, they were preparing for a digital future that had a whole lot less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether and insulating themselves from a very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is really about just one thing: escape.
The super-wealthy cannot afford to live in commercial or political propaganda bubbles. Instead, they form realistic worldviews that can help them to evaluate real-world trends and potential futures. And they know that we are in deep waters. Granted, rich people can be irrational, while some may not really expect an apocalypse but choose to prepare for it anyway, at relatively low cost to them.
See also the following article regarding doomsday prepping in Silicon Valley, among other places. Key quote:
Sometimes the topic emerges in unexpected ways. Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn and a prominent investor, recalls telling a friend that he was thinking of visiting New Zealand. “Oh, are you going to get apocalypse insurance?” the friend asked. “I’m, like, Huh?” Hoffman told me. New Zealand, he discovered, is a favored refuge in the event of a cataclysm. Hoffman said, “Saying you’re ‘buying a house in New Zealand’ is kind of a wink, wink, say no more. Once you’ve done the Masonic handshake, they’ll be, like, ‘Oh, you know, I have a broker who sells old ICBM silos, and they’re nuclear-hardened, and they kind of look like they would be interesting to live in.’ ”
To be continued.
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