Thursday, May 26, 2022

The fake futurism of Elon Musk (video)


The Fake Futurism of Elon Musk
Future: Balding will finally be eradicated.
(Tom Nicholas, 8/9/20) This is a video about Elon Musk and the future. There's perhaps already a distinct "Elon Musk Video Essay" genre on YouTube.

I hope, however, that this takes a different approach to those already out there.

Rather than focusing on who, 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 he fronts.

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?
Future: Twitter will deliver Teslas in space.
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 neo-liberalism (or neoliberal capitalism) in the 1970s, 80s, 90s, and 2000s.

Future: Amber won't be Heard on Mars.
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, and so on, who have also recently sought to break from the status quo and invited us to imagine bold new futures. 

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