November 14, 2022
I want to level for a second about Elon musk.
There's no more conflicted figure in modern society, I don't think, especially at this moment.
On the one hand, nearly everything that we expect a future society to require, he's trying to do, from electric cars to the whole Internet of things, thing. The neural stuff seems a bit out there, but if you've read contemporary Neal Stephenson books, and so on, it's not that far from what Futurists seem to expect us to focus on in the coming decades, like it or believe it, or not.
On the other hand, everything that he seems to be creating, seems to require the same labor conditions that are emblematic of what got us into a dire environmental situation in the first place.
It did used to be that making and manufacturing an electric or hybrid car required more CO2 emissions, than would justify having the car just on the basis of the CO2 emissions alone. Now that isn't so much the case, but it seems like Tesla has gotten there pretty much at the expense of making working conditions at their plants practically inhuman in the fatigue their workers are required to endure.
I want to pull back a bit from asserting that Elon Musk’s voracious appetite for new stuff has exceeded the boundaries of what's necessary to be assembled, into a proof of concept, for what society would need in "a future."
In many ways, Elon Musk is absolute proof that the future can be made. He's a hopeful figure.
But simultaneously he's gotten us started down the path of least resistance, when it comes to the means for which a future will be required. If all it takes is forcing the human body to work through immense fatigue, "powering through," as if it were a personal trainer prescribing the future to us, that leaves little room for the finesse required to make the future work for everybody.
As is, there isn't a proof of concept that the future is possible for everybody, but only proof that the future is now, if you are wealthy enough to be a consistent consumer of Elon Musk's creations.
Musk isn't the only creator of future technologies who plays this role - of concierge to the rich. The technological divide is becoming a class issue.
What happens when these largely unaffordable technologies become basic requirements for a decent life?
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