Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity

Why doesn't the explosive growth of companies such as Facebook and Uber deliver more prosperity for everyone? How could things be different? In San Francisco in 2013 activists protesting against the gentrification of their city smashed the windows of a bus carrying Google employees to work. But these protests weren't just a question of the activists versus the Googlers, or even the 99 per cent versus the 1 per cent. Rather they were symptomatic of the true conflict of our age, between humanity as a whole and a digital economy in which boundless growth is valued above all else. In this groundbreaking book, Douglas Rushkoff - named one of the world's ten most influential thinkers by MIT - lays out a ground plan for a different economic and social future. Ranging from big data to the rise of robots, from the gig economy to the collapse of the eurozone, Rushkoff shows how we can combine the best of human nature with the best of modern technology to achieve a state of sustainable, distributed wealth. It's time the economy finally worked for the human beings it's supposed to serve. "Douglas Rushkoff is one of today's most incisive media theorists and a provocative critic of our digital economy. He's also fun to read". (Walter Isaacson, president and CEO, The Aspen Institute, and author of Steve Jobs and The Innovators). "If you don't know Rushkoff, you're not serious about figuring out what's going to happen next". (Seth Godin, author of Purple Cow and Tribes).