I first met Elon Musk in 1999 when he was just another Silicon Valley techie with a startup (in his case, X.com). But he soon distinguished himself using his boundless imagination and relentless drive that has landed rockets on platforms in the ocean, pioneered the electric-vehicle revolution, and changed how we think about energy in many forms. Cool, right? Not so much these days, because what I did not see coming a mile off was Musk’s wholesale transformation into the world’s richest online troll after his purchase of Twitter. It’s a shame, because much of what he has tried to do over his career—even if some of it is still an aspiration—has been bold and inspirational, especially compared with most of the more anodyne techies for whom a better online dating service is the peak of innovation. But under Musk’s erratic rule, Twitter has become a nonstop grievance tantrum we must all endure, and he wastes far too much of his time fiddling on his toxic violin while it burns. What’s the opposite of progress? Elon Musk 2023.
Swisher is a journalist and host of the podcast On With Kara Swisher. Listen to Swisher’s podcast, “Elon Musk: Someone I Used to Know.”
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