I have been a reluctant skeptic when it comes to the enigmatic Elon Musk ... particularly when one recognized his string of successes. But, of late, these successes seem to have gone to his head as he is sounding more and more eccentric ... we are all part of a giant computer simulation ... robots are going to take over from man ... humans will be inhabiting Mars by 2020 ... and now a new company to hook our brains (melons) directly to computers within four years. He is using his eclat and easy funding to pursue his highly personal but questionable quests. Some of these things may come about but I do think Musk has become smitten by his own genius.
The Wall Street Journal has summarized Elon's recent dreams in a brighter light than he might have liked ... see: WSJ Article (may be behind a pay wall).
That article is behind a paywall. And I find the online WSJ weak and incomplete for the price on every platform I tried accessing it. Sad!
ReplyDeleteYour discounting of eccentrics deserves a retrospective. Do the wranglings of synthetic CDOs and the greed of Wall Street short-sellers appeal more to you? Or maybe you get a thrill from the excitement of destroying the administrative state while showing "America first" by wielding shock and awe in the global community.
ReplyDeleteMusk follows from a long line of cherished futurists (dare I call them progressives?) who imagine what the future will be like and then start building it. And it is not a wall. Sad!
I half admire him myself. But you have to admit ... he is getting a little loopy
DeleteHe has a lot of wealth and a team of enablers. He is not afraid to fail. He can fund the proof of concept, and then targeted stages of success. He picks up on pioneering scientists, such as the people who show that a quadriplegic can display brain-triggerred movement of artificial and actual limbs. That's the POC. That merits setting up a team to explore the general use of that breakthrough. Elon is, as Steve Jobs was, an observer of emerging technologies. And then just expand on it.
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