It’s pretty dispiriting to write a book that points toward the failures of our current technocratic vision and then read in The New York Times that Elon Musk is the new Henry Ford. I mean, some of the parallels are obvious: Ford was a vociferous antisemite and Musk is a white nationalist living in bizarro-land fantasies about N. America. And both created big, important companies. And both think they know the best way to organize society.
A friend of mine and I have substantial disagreement over Musk. My friend believes that as long as Musk gets us to the stars, then nothing else matters.
I disagree. Getting to the stars as an unforgiving, fascist community of dishonesty and oppression would be a bad thing. And I think Musk’s current trajectory is far more likely to land there than in some wondrous and whimsical diaspora of human creativity across the galaxy.
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Robert M Geraci 