• Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus

  • How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity
  • By: Douglas Rushkoff
  • Narrated by: Douglas Rushkoff
  • Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (360 ratings)

Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.
Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus  By  cover art

Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus

By: Douglas Rushkoff
Narrated by: Douglas Rushkoff
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $18.00

Buy for $18.00

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Publisher's summary

Digital technology was supposed to usher in a new age of distributed prosperity, but so far it has been used to put industrial capitalism on steroids. It's not technology's fault but that of an extractive, growth-driven economic operating system that has reached the limits of its ability to serve anyone, rich or poor, human or corporate. Robots threaten our jobs while algorithms drain our portfolios. But there must be a better response to the lopsided returns of the digital economy than to throw rocks at the shuttle buses carrying Google employees to their jobs, as protesters did in December 2013.

In this groundbreaking book, acclaimed media scholar and technology author Douglas Rushkoff calls on us to abandon the monopolist, winner-takes-all values we are unwittingly embedding into the digital economy and to embrace the more distributed possibilities of these platforms. He shows how we can optimize every aspect of the economy - from central currency and debt to corporations and labor - to create sustainable prosperity for business and people alike.

©2016 Douglas Rushkoff (P)2016 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"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 The Innovators)

“A brilliant, bomb-hurling critique of the flaws in our digital economy, identifying what has gone wrong and what can be done about it.” (Financial Times)

“A powerful exposé of an underdiscussed downside to the digital revolution.” (Kirkus Reviews)

What listeners say about Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    224
  • 4 Stars
    90
  • 3 Stars
    31
  • 2 Stars
    10
  • 1 Stars
    5
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    206
  • 4 Stars
    68
  • 3 Stars
    31
  • 2 Stars
    6
  • 1 Stars
    2
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    189
  • 4 Stars
    72
  • 3 Stars
    36
  • 2 Stars
    9
  • 1 Stars
    7

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Heavy on Rhetoric, Light on Facts

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

The author should have backed up his assertions about the roots of capitalism and wealth disparity with specific historic and economic data. Some of his claims about power law distributions not cropping up in more community-based systems are demonstrably false. Power laws are ubiquitous across nature and society, and arise due to naturally-occurring feedback loops in systems which grow via aggregation.

What do you think your next listen will be?

Haven't decided yet

What three words best describe Douglas Rushkoff’s performance?

Clear, Passionate, Emotive

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

It addresses important questions about the societal benefits of grow-or-die capitalism, but misattributes the causes and solutions.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Interesting perspective on late-stage capitalism

Rushkoff avoids the dread "S" and "C" words (for the most part), while giving an interesting take on the problems of a capitalist society in the digital age.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Near nonsense - unsourced and unresearched

Stunned that a book whose central thesis is so flimsy is so well rated. The author has a very basic understanding of most topics covered and seemingly zero understanding of the rest.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

I needed this optimism.

What made the experience of listening to Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus the most enjoyable?

After listening to Harari (Homo Deus) which partly fed the paranoid part of my personality, Rushkoff provided a plausible future for humanity that was refreshing and gave a little boost to my faith.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Usual Rushkoff's High-Level Story

A lot of pan-industry pan-economic generalisations... although woven in to sometimes useful to know and quite fresh talk tracks. Not too many statistics... Nice historical references, connected to subject of the book... I read Douglas before (read Cyberia back in beginning of 1999 or so) and it was the same style.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

waist of time and money.

Got it at the request of my son. Haven't run into such a collection of meaningless words and expression weaved together to create the illusion of creating a new concept of "social justice". If there is a perceived robbery here it's making the writer richer.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Thought provoking...

Excellent and thorough presentation on how wealth gets concentrated into the hands of the few, and some interesting ideas on how we can, in our current business and technical climate, begin to unravel this and create more widely held prosperity. Be prepared for a long listen, he covers a lot of ground. Could easily be two books!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

I liked the book but..

the book was a little over my head for an audio book. I needed to take it slower which was something I didn't really want to do. I loved the stories he used to back up his information.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Being a tech villain

Being a tech villain isn't something that happens to you. it's something that you choose.
if google or facebook shits on the world in the pursuit of their profit the people who buy their stock and the people who run the company are at fault.
They made those choices. not everyone has to be a billionaire or to seek it out stupidly. We can be better and aware of the consequences of our actions.

This is something the author is shoving off into the system of capitalism. sure, capitalism is a problem and at fault for some of it.
But the humans who make the choices at the top are responsible for their terrible choices.
Honestly disappointed by the writer and that I bought the book at all.

The reader is whiny enough to fit the personality of the writer. wah wah wah.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Personal Greed is the Real Problem

Rushkoff tells a story about his friend who co-founded Twitter. This story is meant to illustrate the systemic dangers of elevating growth as the highest priority in business. The problem is that no one forced the owners of Twitter to go public. The "system" didn't do that, the owners of Twitter did that. They could have easily kept Twitter as a private company that remained as disruptive as ever. There are many companies that do this. The founders of Twitter, instead, chose to go for the fast money and made deals with Wall Street bankers that necessitated the transformation of Twitter into a public behemoth that has to grow at all cost. The system is not the problem; the personal greed of Twitter's founders is the problem. Rushkoff may have altruistic notions about what Twitter might have been, but the owners of Twitter were not interested in that. They wanted a big payday and that's what they got.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!