Thanks for this link. I read the article and found the conclusion uplifting. To recap for anyone who doesn't read the article, Rushkoff is writing about what he told a group of ultra wealthy men who were worried about how to protect themselves from the masses during what they believed would be a coming climate chaos. He told them to treat their employees like their own family, that life is a team effort. Here's the last paragraph:
When the hedge funders asked me the best way to maintain authority over their security forces after “the event,” I suggested that their best bet would be to treat those people really well, right now. They should be engaging with their security staffs as if they were members of their own family. And the more they can expand this ethos of inclusivity to the rest of their business practices, supply chain management, sustainability efforts, and wealth distribution, the less chance there will be of an “event” in the first place. All this technological wizardry could be applied toward less romantic but entirely more collective interests right now...
Being human is not about individual survival or escape. It’s a team sport. Whatever future humans have, it will be together.--Douglas Rushkoff. Check out the whole article using the link provided above.
It's all pretty scary in this article but the scariest part for me is that these billionaire oligarchs are already "convinced we are too far gone." With their access to inside information, we have to assume they know many things we're not being told.
And that they're making concrete plans for this apocalypse--it's kinda sadly fascinating to find out that's true. They're really building Elysium. I doubt they'll be able to follow Rushkoff's advice though; the psychology of the super-rich doesn't seem to allow for empathy, not now or in their armed gated communities of the future.
As far as the tech is concerned, has anyone on this site foreseen a future where it will really be possible to achieve the Transhumanist's goal of uploading a person's consciousness to a computer or to the cloud? Is this future possible where "the human future climaxes by uploading our consciousness to a computer," as Rushkoff writes, or is there a technology as he says where "the vexing inconsistencies of the human psyche can be corrected with a digital or genetic upgrade"? Is it possible humans may become cyborgs?