Elon Musk : The man from the future

Samarjit Kambam *

I first saw Elon Musk in a short episode of SNL (Saturday night Live). I thought that he is one of the typical actors of SNL. He was good at what he did, charming, manly, and had an aura of attraction around him. Subsequently, I watched many of his SNL episodes.

He played many roles – the role of a doctor, an anglo-saxon peasant, CEO of a Mars colonisation project (However, for that particular episode credit goes to “Chad” Pete Davidson for his ‘loved by many’ sullen but lovely role).

I even watched him host the SNL – a gala event in which even the hottest actors of Hollywood and diva singers feel short-equipped and lacking behind if they don’t find an opportunity to host an SNL.

Inept and ignorant as I am, apart from Tesla, I came to find out about SpaceX -the multi-billion project for colonisation on planet Mars by humans, SpaceLink, underground tunnels to reduce traffic etc. Turned out that they were all his babies. Recently, he created a furore of making his secrets of making enormous wealth in online trading through cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoins, Dodgecoins, Etherium etc.

From Bill Gates of Windows to Jeff Bezos of Amazon, he has surpassed them to become the wealthiest man on planet earth. What I admire about him is not his opulence but his audacity to take great risks which other billionaire entrepreneurs would think twice to do so.

He could have made more billions of dollars in various other projects but I have a wild guess that he has the article of faith to envision deep into the future so that mankind can be a multiplanetary being.

He had already envisioned that there could always be possibility of earth dying its unnatural death due to unexplained phenomenon or mankind’s fatal accident such as a nuclear holocaust or other reasons which we can’t fathom. That’s why his idea of colonisation of mankind on planet Mars by making it habitable to mankind can be considered a bold and audacious “out of the box” thinking.

He and Late Steve Jobs are similar in many aspects such as innovative ideas and broad vision.Both of them have/had passion for product enhancement, delivering futuristic human friendly products to mankind. Jobs was destined for futuristic product enhancements.

We can’t stop thinking of his legacy when we think about Apple-II, Macintosh, Typography on screen, series of iPhones, iMac, iPods, iPads, Apple Store and other apps such as iTunes. His products change the way we live, but Elon may be considered much more audacious, more envisioned than just products.

Having his roots from South Africa, his earlier phase of life has not been a bed of roses. He had many uphill climbs as well as many downhills slides. PayPal was his idea until he was kicked out by his corporate superiors. But what I admire most about him is his “never say die” attitude.

When he accumulated the wealth of all his assets and talked to like-minded compatriots about his space programme, he was considered a deuce bag and someone who has gone completely out of his mind. Having had his tryst as a denizen of Silicon Valley, he ventured out into what other entrepreneurs thought impossible. He projected views and ideas to others which are too sci-fi to be implemented.

His audacity is that he let the public know what he is doing and planning on. If Area 51 located at Nevada desert, US is his, he would even have unlocked all its secrets and lay bare all the secrets of extra-terrestrial simians to the public thereby making known to the public about the reality whether we are the only dominant species on planet earth or whether there are aliens from other galaxies or whether there are flying objects far advanced from what we the humans are making.

His concern for the future of mankind can be considered praiseworthy. He has long envisioned that with the exploding population on planet earth and ever depleting resources, an alternative for the humans to sustain as inter-planetary species is quite pragmatic regardless of the risks and the jumbo monetary amount he has to incur. In fact, he may be considered as a lover of mankind and treads where no one dares too.

Like Jeff Bejos, he could have made billions during the Covid-19 pandemic but his approach and mentality is quite significantly different. That shows that profit-making only is not his real objective.

Elon Musk has re-invented Silicon Valley even though, sadly, he left it. He is the perfect example of harmonious melding of software, electronics, advanced materials and computing horsepower. We have seen many science-fiction movies – some destroy mankind out of corporate greed, some save mankind out of philanthropic idealism.

Musk belongs to the latter and is on an all out mission to convert science fiction to reality by paving the way towards astonishing machines and sci-fi dreams made manifest. He comes out more like Thomas Edison. He is an inventor, celebrity, businessman, an industrialist able to take big ideas and turn them into reality.

He’s making the world a better place by employing thousands of people in his Musk factories at a time when this was thought impossible with many rockets made from scratch by his team piling them just like we stack our clothes inside the wardrobe. Because of him, many countries of the world would be waking up in ten or so years with the most modern highways imaginable, a transit system run by thousands of solar-powered charging stations and traversed by electric cars.

By that time SpaceX may well be sending up rockets almost every day, taking people and things to many habitats thought no longer habitable and making preparations for longer treks to Mars.

Personally, Elon Musk is my hero, a diva, a source of inspiration. He is relentless in what he does and I like the way he takes on the world in his stride.