Jobs was never a cool guy in my book. For me, Steve Jobs was an egocentric and self-centered. Elon is a visionary, just read this quote:
“I came to the conclusion that we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask. Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.”
Steve isn't even near to the impact of what Elon will have on humanity.
And unlike Jobs, Elon is behind much of the engineering and research his companies work on.
And also unlike Jobs, you can sense a certain humility in how Elon talks both about himself and about others.
When Neil Armstrong spoke against private space companies, Elon didn't come out and demonize him, I remember watching him cry on camera when asked about it, and said he wished he'd come to Space X to see the work they were doing.
You don't see Elon going "thermonuclear" on his competition and trying to bury them, even when they are huge mega-corporations like Boeing that used all their government connections and lobbying to try to bury him.
Well, you're comparing two visionary entrepreneurs at different stages right now. Jobs wasn't quite as arrogant after he fell from the throne and had to start from scratch (Pixar, NeXT). That's about where I'd put Elon right now, even though the circumstances of his departure from PayPal was of course entirely different. I'd like to see him once SpaceX or Tesla becomes a megacorporation like Apple - the judgement is still out on that. You can't compare the way SpaceX acts towards Boeing with Apple towards its competitors - one is an underdog that has nothing to loose, one is a goliath with the world to loose.
But Jobs wasn't as humble and polite even when Apple was an underdog and was competing in the world of IBM. Weren't those interviews where he calls out Microsoft as "they have bad taste" the same time period?
It was 1996 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upzKj-1HaKw). No, Jobs was certainly never as humble as Musk and I never said that, they definitely have different characters. My point was that we still have to wait on Musk, this man and his companies are far away from their goals and it remains to be seen whether they can afford to keep being idealistic.
And don't get me wrong, I'm a space freak, I root for that guy as much as anyone.
What you can surmise from that is that they've both probably taken some acid in their lifetimes. If Jobs were alive and younger, he too would probably have been at Burning Man, place of many a revelation to the technologically inclined.
I think the value of that should not be misunderstood. Imagine the reverse: it would be quite damaging if something made you think that your ideas were less profound or worthwhile than usual.
(I am saying this as someone who has never taken LSD, so take my take on it with a grain of salt I guess.)
In Star Trek IV, Kirk says to a marine biologist that Spock is strange because he did a little too much "LDS." This was paricularly amusing to viewers who grew up in Utah.
I respect Elon's ambition and the perspective he shares in that quote but both Space X and Tesla only continue to exist by feeding at the government trough.
Personal and mobile computing have lead to massive productivity increases that affect almost everything that we do on this planet.
I'd also argue that the desire to improve space and ground transportation aren't the result of an enlightened human consciousness that discovered the right questions to ask. Using less energy to move around isn't going to improve the persistent suffering humanity experiences.
Jobs appears to have understood this fact but was unfortunately resigned to it rather than determined to fight it:
What's the biggest surprise this technology will deliver?
The problem is I'm older now, I'm 40 years old, and this stuff doesn't change the world. It really doesn't.
That's going to break people's hearts.
I'm sorry, it's true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We're born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It's been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much - if at all.
one man's "feeding at the government trough" is another man's "putting taxpayer's money to good, productive use in projects too long-term for the perennially distracted market to care about them"
The market is the best way to gauge how useful people find things. The fact that they can't make a profit within the market is a sign that they're spending more wealth than they are creating.
What I personally like about Elon - he has demonstrated that he gambles with his own money. This makes him fairly unique among serial entrepreneurs who love to raise massive rounds for their next projects even after a prior successful "exit", using lame excuses about discipline, supervision, reality checks, second opinion, etc.
I don't know if "gambles" is he right word - he's not a complete idiot after all. He puts his money where his mouth is, because he really think his projects are that important. He's taken every chance to prove that he believes in his visions, which is truly inspiring.
I appreciate this sentiment, but it makes me think of "The queen is dead. Long live the queen."
"Visionaries" and "cool people" are in many ways good and bad, flawed and gifted, like you and me. It does not serve any good purpose to hold either Jobs or Elon up to the spotlight as if they are any sort of savior.
If anything good comes in the next 10-20 years, it will be because of not only Elon, but people like the rest of us that choose to do something, not wait on others to do something great for us. That said, there is nothing wrong (to say the least) with someone who can drum up the troops.
`Blankenship, who used to work a few doors down from Jobs, credits Musk with hiring experts and letting them work without too much oversight. “This is the first place I’ve worked that’s going to change the world,” he says.`
I liked this quote where the dude who worked for apple say he's finally working somewhere that's going to change the world... I like Elon better than Jobs(I've never really liked Jobs tbh, except for some genius quotes)
