Headline, April 01 2024/ ''' ELON MUSK ELIX '''

''' ELON MUSK ELIX '''

!FIRST AND FOREMOST! : SYED SHABBAR ZAIDI for '' Timeless values and Unconventional thinking ''. It is a great privilege to nominate and then endow his great self with a life long membership of The World Students Society.

FOR Proud Pakistan's students and citizens, global economy - what will be very important in the future on !WOW!, would be esteemed Syed Shabbar Zaidi's world class expertise in handling global capital, banking, finance, taxation, IPOs and embracing and explaining an AI MINDSET on Ecosystem 2011.

MESSIAH - MENACE OR BOTH? WHAT EXACTLY is going on with Elon Musk? This question once preoccupied only techie types.

But Mr Musk's prominence in space-launch services, satellite-internet access, electric cars and social media means that the unpredictable behaviour of the world's richest man now has global consequences.

He controls Donald Trump's access to Twitter, internet connectivity for Ukraine's armed forces and America's ability to send people into space.

He has altered the course of multiple industries. And he has a knack for spotting what will be important in the future [ so his side bets on brain chips and humanoid robots are probably worth watching]. It is no surprise so many people now want to know what makes Mr. Musk tick.

WALTER ISAACSON sets out to answer that question in this intimate biography. Previously a biographer of Steve Jobs, he shadowed Mr. Musk for two years, gaining access to his family and closest confidants, to produce a detailed psychological portrait.   

Born in 1971, Mr. Musk had a tumultuous childhood in South Africa. He was brought up partly by a struggling single mother and partly by an abusive father. Violently bullied at school, Mr.Musk escaped into daydreams and science-fiction novels.

As a young man he emigrated, first to Canada, then America. He made his first millions during the dotcom fever of the late 1990s, co-founding an online business directory and then an online bank that, after a merger, became PayPal.

He then set himself a modest goal of turning Hono sapiens into a '' multi-planetary species '' that could survive extinction on Earth.

It is hard to think of anyone else who has wrought such astounding change in so many different fields of endeavour, notably with SpaceX, his rocket company, and Tesla, a maker of electric cars.

Yet Mr Musk is as widely loathed as he is admired, his crusade against the '' woke mind virus '' and his rocky stewardship of Twitter [ which for some reason he has renamed X ].

Mr. Isaacson describes a man with a loft vision for humankind, but who is impulsive, pugnacious and self-destructive.

In Mr Isaacson's view, Mr Musk is propelled by a conviction that humanity is hurtling towards calamity. Hence his superhuman ethic [ the man barely sleeps] and his tolerance for risk [ he has endangered his fortune a number of times and often pushes his engineers to take calculated gambles].

Hence, too, his habit of furiously reprimanding or even summarily firing employees whom he deems incompetent or insufficiently committed.

Has the true Mr Musk emerged, feeling increasingly unconstrained as his wealth and power have grown, or has this behaviour been exacerbated by his use of Twitter? It is probably a bit of both.

Mr. Isaacson concedes that his subject sometimes behaves foolishly. Mr Musk's addiction to social media has caused unnecessary spats. He accused a rescue diver in Thailand of being a ''pedo guy'', provoking a defamation suit [ which Mr Musk won ].

He declared he had ''funding secured'' to take Tesla private, when he did not, and had to make a multimillion-dollar settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. As Mr Musk admits : '' I've shot myself in the foot so often I ought to buy some Kevlar boots.''

In recent years his tweets have lambasted left-wing positions on issues such as gender identity, and flirted with right-wing conspiracy theories.

This rightward shift can be explained in part. Mr Isaacson says, by falling out between Mr  Musk and his transgender daughter Jenna, whose Marxist worldview led her to sever ties with her father.

Mr Musk's belief that Twitter had become infected with wokery and was censoring alternative viewpoints was a big factor in his decision to buy it. Mr. Isaacson also speculates that the deal gave Mr Musk, scarred by his childhood bullying, a chance to '' own the playground''.

All this now risks overshadowing Mr Musk's positive contributions. Some Tesla drivers tout bumper stickers that read '' I bought this car before we all knew Elon was a jerk''.

More worryingly, he seems out of his depth in geopolitics. This doorstep sized book provided a gripping account of Mr Musk's extraordinary life. But it is hard to escape the feeling that the story of Elon Musk is still only half told.

Book Review : ''Elon Musk : By Walter Isaacson''. The World Students Society thanks The Economist.

With most loving and respectful dedication to the Global Founder Framers of The World Students Society, and then Students, Professors and Teachers of the world.

See you all prepare for Great Global Elections on !WOW! - for every subject in the world : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter X !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless