Why Did We Turn Elon Musk Into The Modern God He Is Today?

A pragmatic analysis of Musk’s so-called achievements, innovations, and vision…

God complex. It’s nothing new. Has been around since Ancient Rome and Athens. Heck, if history is anything to go by, way before then. Some used it to their and their fellow human beings’ advantage, while others for nothing but destruction. Hitler, Trump, and Putin are just some of the more recent usual candidates for villainous throne-wasters. But that’s politics, and in politics it’s hard not to be a villain, so today that’s what we’re going to look at. There is another space, almost, if not entirely, a parallel universe by now — and that’s tech, where tech magnates play God. One of the most prominent ones is no other than Elon Musk.

In fairness to the man, he only did half the work necessary to be on the tech throne he is on now. The other half was us, quite likely each of us at one point or another. It’s easy to assume genius when you don’t poke under the hood, so I want to. The more I followed Musk’s journey, the more I asked myself whether he deserves any of the awe us “mere mortals” offer him on a silver platter? What did Elon really “invent”? How innovative are the products he launches, and is there really a coherent vision in the things he does? Let’s find out, shall we?

PayPal

We all know what PayPal is and most of us who do, we hate it, but one must admit that in 1999 it was a novel idea to send money using nothing more than someone’s email address. But the story isn’t as clear-cut as many conveniently mis-remember. Before PayPal, an online payment system already existed in the US, and it was called Confinity. X.com, in which Elon was only a co-founder, then merged with Confinity exactly because it had the easy payment system. If anything, the merger was a good call, but none of the innovation can be attributed to our story’s hero. Additionally, across the oceans and seas, in Australia, BPAY already existed since 1997, two years ahead of PayPal. Where they shined more than their predecessors and competitors was a strong business relationship with US banks and credit card processors. Zero innovation points for the richest troll on Twitter.

Zip2

Another blast from the past, and if you spent only a couple of minutes of research, you’d assume you finally found an original Musk idea, except you’d be wrong. While only three months “late” to the party after CitySearch’s launch in September 1995, it is late enough that I, for one, cannot find it in me to credit Musk with the idea. Nevertheless, it was probably the least controversial venture he was ever part of and was sold for a pretty penny in 1999 to Compaq Computer, who then integrated it into their Alta Vista search engine.

Tesla

I wanted a Tesla, up until quite recently. There is definitely some magic surrounding the brand, but is it really worth all the hype? Sure, Teslas are among the best range/charge electric cars, they do look good, and you can just buy one online like you’d buy an iPhone. That’s all kind of cool, no? Objectively, yes, except when it comes to innovation, Tesla as a general concept is anything but. I would even argue that it should not be using the Tesla name, as I feel it gives a bad name to Nikola Tesla, whom I have a lot more respect for.

Speaking of respect, you will never guess when the first electric car was built. 1827! Yes, nearly 200 years ago, by no other than a Hungarian dude — hence my respect — a priest, Ányos Jedlik. Continuing the trend…

The first mass-produced electric vehicles appeared in America in the early 1900s. In 1902, the Studebaker Automobile Company entered the automotive business with electric vehicles… — Wikipedia

It’s thanks to Ford that electric cars didn’t get enough adoption, and it’s a shame because the Detroit Electric was a pretty dope looking car! Believe it or not, those were sold by the thousands for years. For the early 1900s, that’s a pretty significant number!

But you get the picture. I don’t need to bore you with the entire history of electric vehicles, which there were many built since then, by dozens of companies, some successful, some less so. The bottom line here is that the concept of electric cars is two centuries old and while it might hurt some egos out there, I can’t attribute any glory to Tesla’s creator. It’s nothing more but another try at something that has been tried every two decades.

Musk got lucky that finally the planet was is bad enough shape that electric cars could be marketed as an environmentally friendly alternative. Selling without a dealer involved. Again, nothing new. Perhaps a novel idea for Americans, but in Romania for instance during communism orders were made with the party’s approval directly to the factory, after which you waited up to five years to receive your Dacia. Sounds like the same story to me. Same expensive, lengthy process, different “dictator”. 🤣

Punching the table, screaming for more efficient motors and batteries, is not innovation, but rather building aggressively on the successes of many giants before.

The Boring Company

This is the company that should have been named “The Stupid Company”, and it’s a prime example of sheer idiocracy hiding behind the moniker of “innovative tech”. Essentially, a pipe with vacuum, stuffed with people speeding through it at hundreds of miles. What could go wrong…? 🤣

If it were an original idea, I’d say, fine, most first ideas are stupid by default. It’s inevitable. God or Big Bang created Earth, but it also got it wrong 7 times before it got it right. You know, all those other planets, one of which I’ll get back to in a hot minute… But it wasn’t an original idea by any means. This one is even older than the electric car, dating back as far as 1799. Dude. Take a second to fully grasp how long ago that was. George Medhurst had the original idea of moving goods through pressurised pipes. In the mid-1800s pneumatic railways were built in London, Paris and even the lovely Dublin I live in.

If you look at Robert Goddard’s 1910 vacuum train supposed to carry people from New York to Boston in just 12 minutes, you really start getting how boring actually is Musk’s Boring Company. Nothing new here folks, move along.

Hyperloop is a great example of childish, poorly educated delusion meets stupid amounts of cash.

If you’d like to watch some really entertaining and eye-opening videos on the matter, I recommend Adam Something, my Hungarian compatriot’s videos on why Hyperloop is an exponentially stupid idea. All videos are in English, so you don’t have an excuse not to watch and learn.

SpaceX

Cheap rockets and satellites everywhere. How? The recipe is actually simple and if there is anything to applaud Musk for is having good enough memory to remember that state-funded projects are always bloated, cost far too much money and are slow to evolve because of corruption, lobbying, politics and mountains of paperwork taller than a rocket’s launch-pad. My home, the city of Dublin has been talking about getting a tram or tube to the airport for many years, and guess where that plan is? Nowhere other than pretty concept art.

So, Musk decided he’s going to build a rocket that doesn’t break itself into pieces after one launch. A reusable rocket. What a novel idea! If I sound sarcastic, that’s because I am. I went into this exposé prepared to be wrong, to scrap it mid-way and admit defeat and declare Musk the incontestable tech deity that many consider him to be. But all one has to do is 10–15 minute bursts of research to find that this — the concept of reusable launch vehicles — is also not a Musk idea. Not by a long-shot!

Is SpaceX’s VTVL an evolutionary step forward? By all means, yes, give credit where credit is due, but by far not an original idea or even a first success. The DC-X by McDonnell Douglas took off 12 times and had NASA’s support. Horizontal variants have also been developed by plenty of other space-ventures across the world.

Neuralink

Where visionary meets creepy but only for a second, to then be overtaken largely by the creepy aspects of yet another co-founded venture of our hero, who is slowly but surely turning into a villain more than anything else.

Of course, as with pretty much everything Musk “invented”, “founded” or “envisioned”, this is yet another example of the stark opposite. BCIs (brain-computer interface) or BMIs (brain-machine interface) are nothing new, and started in the 1970s, almost half a century ago with research by Jaques Vidal followed by a DARPA contract.

But that’s not even the full story. The history of BCIs really starts in 1924, practically a century ago, with Hans Berger’s discovery of electrical activity in the human brain. I think it’s also more than fair to mention at this point neuroprosthetics like cochlear and retinal implants, none of which Musk has anything to do with, but predate his “genius” idea of reading thoughts and intents.

Don’t mistake me for a skeptic, though. The technology in BCIs, while extremely dangerous in the wrong hands, is also an interesting one that has merit on its own. The problem arises when you look at who is intending to further advance on the science. Reading minds and mind-control sound dangerously close to each other. Would you for instance jump at the opportunity of using the tech if it was backed by say Stalin? Food for thought…

OpenAI

I purposely chose this as the next one to look at, right after Neuralink, as when looking at it from within the context of everything else Musk touched in the last three decades, a definite Tony Stark gone rogue vibe surfaces. If you haven’t guessed it by now, OpenAI is also no original idea of our famous Twitter troll. Deep Mind, its main competitor, has been around for half a decade when Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015. And yes, again, co-founded with five other investors, only to resign from the board three years later, though remaining a donor — whatever that means. I guess friendly AI — what OpenAI stands for — wasn’t exactly up his alley, but thought that spending a bit of pocket-money on it could come in handy later.

The Mars mission

Because going to Mars — a defunct planet — that potentially has frozen water is the worthiest space-travel cause we can come up with in the 21st century. This is the point where, in my eyes, Elon has lost all credibility. This is the point where I’d call a doctor if my dad would suggest we moved to Mars. I love my dad very much, but I would have him committed and declared clinically insane.

I am the last one to criticise crazy, grandiose ideas. I am all for round pegs in square holes, here’s the crazy ones and all of that, but colonising Mars is not the good kind of crazy. The entire concept is so flawed, it’s sickening. But somehow Musk doesn’t see that. I understand that Aspergers can make people think differently and struggle with certain emotions, reading people and empathy in general, but going to Mars is a suicide-mission.

Mars’ atmosphere and habitat — if you can call a bunch of red rocks and sand that — is lightyears away from Earth’s in terms of its ability to sustain life. Maybe this blue ball of dirt we’re inhabiting is going through a bit of a traumatic phase, but a lot of it is still controllable and manageable, and will be for hundreds if not thousands more years to come.

Going to Mars is like giving up your middle-class apartment in the city for a cold concrete pillar under an abandoned bridge in northern Siberia. “WTF is wrong with you” doesn’t even begin to cover it…

The God that never was…

I think we can safely conclude that many of our modern tech Gods are anything but, and while no-one denies their popularity, that’s largely a symptom of our current society, the way we attribute power, glory and impenetrable aura to those who never deserved or perhaps never even asked for any.

I have no right to decide whether Elon Musk assumed willingly the role society gave him or just rolled with the waves of popularity, but I can say how it all appears at a closer look.

There is no innovation, the vision is a dangerous worldwide nightmare, and the only achievement is fooling half a planet. But then again, isn’t that the definition of every mythological deity?

It’s 2022. Maybe it’s time the Iliad and the Odyssey got a third volume…

Attila Vago — Software Engineer improving the world one line of code at a time. Cool nerd since forever, writer of codes and blogs. Web accessibility advocate, LEGO fan, vinyl record collector. Loves craft beer!