The Musk Infrastructure of the Future

Elon Musk’s electric cars, starships, satellite internet, brain implants, even his take on social networking now called X, point us to a more serious infrastructure worthy of a potentially multi planet future.

As mentioned in a previous chapter I recently read his most recent biography by Walter Isaacson and though I have criticism of Isaacson once again focusing too much on the perils of a difficult childhood and relationship with his father, and Elon’s notorious antics with the media, women, even heavily present in the ebb-and-flow of his companies, and even though magazine’s like the New Yorker, never mind denizens on the left are turning on Musk, I do have a growing respect for what he is trying to do and find his vision quite compelling.

While there is a new book coming out I intend to read called The End of Reality: How Four Billionaires are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars, and Crypto by Jonathan Taplin, and critics such as Paris Marx who puts out the podcast Tech Won’t Save Us, I think tech actually could.

I have experienced the hype cycle for platforms and products, and various technologies, since the 90s and very much bought into the vision presented in magazines such as Wired and Mondo 2000 that tech would be the panacea, and just drove myself too hard at times trying to keep up which led to problems with my mental health (to be discussed in a forthcoming book called Doomer and Back: Questions on Bipolar, Tech, Climate and Freedom), but the current reality seems to be more in line with another book I am reading called The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century’s Greatest Dilemma by Mustafa Suleyman—although this latter book is attempting to paint a bleak picture of AI progress and biotech in particular in their potentialities for destruction, its dazzling portrayals of the possibilities of these technologies and others nonetheless comes across as spellbinding.