The Fake Futurism of Elon Musk
1,757,829
Published 2020-08-09
A video about Elon Musk and the future.
Timestamps:
0:00 SpaceX Mars
01:49 Introduction
05:35 Tesla, Ford and A Tale of Two Cars
08:53 Futurism
13:00 The Slow Cancellation of the Future
17:53 Back to the Future
21:31 Muskian Futurism for Whom?
There's perhaps already a distinct "Elon Musk Video Essay" genre here on YouTube. Hopefully, though, this takes a different approach to those which are already out there.
Rather than focussing on I take a look at why Elon Musk has become such a revered figure in recent years and why so many people have embraced Elon Musk's Loop, Tesla, Hyperloop, Spacex, Mars Mission, Neuralink and other projects.
Drawing partly on the work of Mark Fisher and Franco "Bifo" Birardi, I consider how human perceptions of the future (at least in the advanced capitalist nations) have changed over time. In particular, I'm interested in how Elon Musk's rise might be read as a response to what Birardi and Fisher refer to as the "Slow Cancellation of the Future" during the ascendency of neoliberalism (or neoliberal capitalism) in the 1970s, 80s, 90s and 2000s.
I also argue that Elon Musk might have more than a little in common with figures in the political sphere such as Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC) and "The Squad", Jeremy Corbyn etc. who have also recently sought to break from the status quo and invited us to imagine bold new futures.
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#ElonMusk #SpaceX #Neuralink
All Comments (21)
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Help me make more videos like this while getting Early Access to my videos, copies of the scripts to them and more by heading to patreon.com/tomnicholas
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people talk about going to Mars to escape climate calamity as if there's clean air and beautiful gardens waiting on Mars.
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Elon Musk is a testament to what one man can achieve when his parents own an emerald mine
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"By the rich. For the rich." My take on most of Elon's visions.
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If we're comparing Musk and Ford, it's worth pointing out that Ford started his company. Musk started at Tesla as an activist investor, and forced out the founder.
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It’s ironic how Elon Musk is the face of Tesla because he has a lot more in common with Thomas Edison than anyone else.
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I believe in a future where people don’t idolize billionaires who haven’t invented anything like Musk.
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Elon Musk’s “futuristic ideas” are literally just normal things run through a filter to make them less efficient and more “futuristic”
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How the mighty have fallen. While highspeed trains go more then 250 km an hour throughout Europe & Asia , and one can go from France to England in a tunnel under the sea, Musk fans are celebrating a man who build a taxi tunnel under Las Vegas.
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Elon Musk is the "I'm not like other girls" of capitalists.
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"I'm a bigger fan of Edison than Telsa, because Edison brought his inventions to the market." - Elon Musk This sums up everything- his thinking, his approach to life; it's only about making money.
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When I was in college, I was so excited by SpaceX & Tesla. It took me several years & a lot of education to finally understand that Musk wasn't taking us towards Star Trek, he's taking us towards Blade Runner. Nowadays it seems insane to me that I was ever taken in.
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Elon Musk is treated like he's a visionary just because he watched Blade Runner and thought 'I can make this real!' without wasting a second thinking about it realistically.
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Elon is a genius, he added rgb lights to the hyperloop.
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The irony about that star trek episode is that, the person who name dropped Musk as visionary ended up being from the mirror universe, where historical figures often end up morally opposite to our "prime" universe. Pretty sure that was just an oversight (like so many others in Discovery) but still hilarious IMO.
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If Elon announced that he would build an interplanetary hyperloop to make space travel easier; I'm sure there would be plenty of eager fools ready to invest.
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I first lost respect for Elon Musk when he said he was going to build a small submarine to rescue the football team trapped in a cave in Thailand. He expected them to wait while he grandstanded to get hero status.
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The genius of Elon Musk is he gets people to believe this BS.
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I'm tight with an ex Tesla employee and the workplace was a nightmare. They were overworked to the point where their physical health was declining, and any time musk came through everyone walked on eggshells around him because he'd fire people at the drop of a hat
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So many people equate Elon Musk with a real life Tony Stark, but the truth is while both are man babies, Tony Stark actually invented stuff.
