Earth Escapists: Douglas Rushkoff’s “The Privileged Have Entered Their Escape Pods”
Douglas Rushkoff is a media theorist, author, and professor whose works center on media, society, and economics, aspects of our modern world that are at the heart of the Anthropocene. In addition to teaching Media Theory and Digital Economics at CUNY/Queens, he’s written several books about technology and culture, including Program or be Programmed and Team Human , a book with an accompanying podcast, which he also hosts. His article “ The Privileged Have Entered Their Escape Pods” appeared in Medium’s “OneZero ” publication on September 1, 2020, and discusses how, in many ways, the COVID-19 pandemic has served to encourage the escape fantasies of the rich. Rushkoff’s central argument in this piece is that billionaires are not the only ones at fault for perpetuating the idea of a “hermetically sealed, Covid-19-inspired techno-paradise.” He focuses on the “privileged,” a class of people largely made up of those who have jobs that can be done entirely remotely. These people, Rushkoff s