“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.” – Ursula K. Le Guin As Ursula K. Le Guin argues, rapacious billionaire capitalism is neither natural nor inescapable. Yet, as Srnicek and Williams (2015) contend (and we agree), few viable alternatives have emerged to challenge this new gilded age’s concentration of wealth. It is a failure of political imagination. There are viable post-billionaire futures. Emergent technologies of the 21st century—in particular Generative AI—seem a nightmare of billionaire neo-robber-barons imposed on us all to…
Author: Michael Salvo
Michael Salvo, John Sherrill
Michael J. Salvo is Professor of Professional Writing in the English Department at Purdue University. Artificial Infrastructures (with John Sherrill) was just published by the WAC Clearinghouse (2025). Routledge published his book Writing Postindustrial Places, exploring globally competitive firms in the American Midwest (2018). He also edited Rhetoric and Experience Architecture with Liza Potts (Parlor Press, 2017).