WEBVTT - The Evening Rocket: Dimension X 0:00:15.396 --> 0:00:23.356 Pushkin. My name is jo Lapour. I'm a professor of 0:00:23.396 --> 0:00:25.796 history at Harvard, a New York or staff writer and 0:00:25.876 --> 0:00:29.876 host of the podcast The Last Archive. Last spring, I 0:00:29.916 --> 0:00:32.956 made a program with the BBC's Radio four. It's called 0:00:33.316 --> 0:00:36.916 The Evening Rocket, and now Pushkin Industries is releasing that 0:00:36.996 --> 0:00:40.836 show stateside for the first time. It's all about Elon 0:00:40.916 --> 0:00:45.516 Musk and his strange new kind of capitalism. Call it Muskism, 0:00:45.596 --> 0:00:51.356 extravagant extreme capitalism, extraterrestrial capitalism where stock prices are driven 0:00:51.356 --> 0:00:56.036 by earnings but also by fantasies. I'm fascinated by civilcon 0:00:56.116 --> 0:01:00.156 Valley's futurism and by how in Musk's life those visions 0:01:00.196 --> 0:01:03.196 of the future will come from the same place the 0:01:03.356 --> 0:01:06.516 science fiction he grew up on. To understand where Musk 0:01:06.596 --> 0:01:09.116 wants to take the rest of us with his electric cars, 0:01:09.316 --> 0:01:13.356 rockets to Mars, his meme stocks, and tunnels deep beneath 0:01:13.356 --> 0:01:16.196 the Earth, I decided to look at those science fiction 0:01:16.236 --> 0:01:19.956 stories and understand what he's missed about them. So blast 0:01:19.996 --> 0:01:22.516 off with me on The Evening Rocket on a journey 0:01:22.836 --> 0:01:35.316 into the history of our future. Elon Musk is one 0:01:35.316 --> 0:01:38.836 of the richest people on the planet He intends to 0:01:38.876 --> 0:01:42.516 save the world from climate catastrophe with electric cars and 0:01:42.596 --> 0:01:47.356 solar panels and underground tunnels. He plans to colonize Mars. 0:01:47.756 --> 0:01:50.956 He's building chips to put in people's brains. He is 0:01:50.996 --> 0:01:54.596 adored by fifty million followers on Twitter. He has two 0:01:54.796 --> 0:01:58.716 x wives and six sons, including a baby named X. 0:01:59.756 --> 0:02:02.876 The bare facts of Musk's life, the way they're usually 0:02:02.916 --> 0:02:06.636 told make them sound like a fictional character, a comic 0:02:06.676 --> 0:02:11.476 book superhero. But what's the story, the actual history behind 0:02:11.516 --> 0:02:24.116 the comic book. Welcome to The Evening Rocket. I'm Jill Lapour. 0:02:24.476 --> 0:02:27.636 I'm a professor at Harvard. I'm a US political historian, 0:02:27.836 --> 0:02:30.356 and for a long time I've been studying the relationship 0:02:30.396 --> 0:02:36.276 between technological and political change. I'm fascinated by visions of 0:02:36.316 --> 0:02:40.636 the future in political discourse, in literature and science fiction, 0:02:41.276 --> 0:02:46.836 and even comic books. This series, I'll be exploring a 0:02:46.916 --> 0:02:52.436 new kind of capitalism, call it Muscism, extravagant extreme capitalism, 0:02:52.436 --> 0:02:57.036 extra terrestrial capitalism, where stock prices are driven by earnings 0:02:57.396 --> 0:03:00.516 and also by fantasies. Fantasies that you can find in 0:03:00.556 --> 0:03:04.956 blockbusters superhero movies, but that come from science fiction. Some 0:03:05.116 --> 0:03:12.116 of it a century old. The title of this series 0:03:12.156 --> 0:03:14.996 comes from old science fiction two in a pulp story 0:03:15.076 --> 0:03:18.636 from nineteen thirty eight, The Evening Rocket was the name 0:03:18.676 --> 0:03:22.676 of a newspaper of the future, also in Silicon Valley. 0:03:22.716 --> 0:03:26.316 The rocket is the go to metaphor for explosive growth. 0:03:26.916 --> 0:03:29.636 This is a rocket ship, Get on it. The CEO 0:03:29.676 --> 0:03:32.836 of Google like to tell people about his company. Cheryl 0:03:32.916 --> 0:03:36.316 Sandberg of Facebook said the same thing. It's all about 0:03:36.356 --> 0:03:40.876 fast growth. Blast off the people at Google and Facebook. 0:03:41.076 --> 0:03:44.836 They're not doing rocket science. Elon Musk, though he really 0:03:44.876 --> 0:03:49.156 does run a rocket science company. It's called SpaceX. Musk 0:03:49.356 --> 0:03:53.036 loves the letter X. One of his first big startups, 0:03:53.236 --> 0:03:56.796 X dot com. X is sexy as an X rated, 0:03:57.156 --> 0:04:00.756 but X is sexy because X means mysterious and X 0:04:00.836 --> 0:04:05.196 means mysterious because in sixteen thirty seven, when Renee Descartes 0:04:05.196 --> 0:04:08.276 sat down to write a treatise on geometry, he decided 0:04:08.316 --> 0:04:11.876 to use X and Z for variables, but his printer 0:04:12.076 --> 0:04:15.116 setting the type kept running out of ys and z's, 0:04:15.756 --> 0:04:18.036 but not xes because you don't use X very often 0:04:18.076 --> 0:04:23.756 in French, so he used mostly xes X. The unknown 0:04:27.196 --> 0:04:31.276 in the twentieth century, X became science fiction writer's favorite 0:04:31.316 --> 0:04:41.796 letter of the alphabet X for extraterrestrial, as in the 0:04:41.836 --> 0:04:45.636 film The Strange World of Planet X. Be prepared for 0:04:45.756 --> 0:04:50.436 a fantastic adventure and to the future a monstrous world 0:04:50.516 --> 0:04:56.276 of terriinal chaos. By the nineteen nineties, X Men, xbox, 0:04:56.636 --> 0:05:01.356 X Files and then Elon Muskin X dot Com, SpaceX, 0:05:03.756 --> 0:05:07.316 something strange was happening to capitalism. As the gap between 0:05:07.316 --> 0:05:09.916 the rich and the poor got wider and eider, the 0:05:09.956 --> 0:05:14.356 claims of corporations got more and more grandiose. Google opened 0:05:14.396 --> 0:05:17.636 an R and D division called X, whose aim was 0:05:17.676 --> 0:05:21.996 to solve some of the world's hardest problems. Tech companies 0:05:22.036 --> 0:05:24.556 started talking about their mission, and their mission was always 0:05:24.596 --> 0:05:29.796 magnificently inflated, transforming the future of work, connecting all of humanity, 0:05:30.236 --> 0:05:34.476 making the world a better place. Scholars kept groping for 0:05:34.556 --> 0:05:39.236 adjectives to describe these new brands of capitalism. Surveillance capitalism, 0:05:39.276 --> 0:05:46.036 platform capitalism, identity capitalism, What about just x capitalism? Expert extreme, 0:05:46.116 --> 0:05:51.676 extravagant existential a capitalism in which companies worry very publicly 0:05:51.676 --> 0:05:55.996 and quite feverishly about planetary disaster, about the all two 0:05:56.076 --> 0:05:59.516 real catastrophe of climate change, but also about all sorts 0:05:59.516 --> 0:06:02.556 of so called existential risks to the future of the 0:06:02.636 --> 0:06:06.716 human race, so that they can save us all. A 0:06:06.836 --> 0:06:11.516 capitalism animated by catastrophe, a capitalism driven by science fiction 0:06:12.236 --> 0:06:16.156 and driven too by the disavowal of its own origins. 0:06:22.636 --> 0:06:25.836 To recover that history, each episode of The Evening Rocket 0:06:25.836 --> 0:06:29.316 will blast off to the past. This episode is called 0:06:29.636 --> 0:06:37.436 Dimension X. Our first destination in time and space is 0:06:37.476 --> 0:06:41.756 South Africa in the nineteen seventies. Elon Musk was born 0:06:41.796 --> 0:06:45.196 in Pretoria in nineteen seventy one. His father, Errol, was 0:06:45.236 --> 0:06:48.316 an engineer who owned a construction business. His mother was 0:06:48.356 --> 0:06:51.716 a former model. They had three kids. Elon was the oldest, 0:06:51.796 --> 0:06:54.076 and then they got divorced when he was still a boy. 0:06:54.956 --> 0:06:57.956 Errol Musk once gave an interview to South Africa's Radio 0:06:58.076 --> 0:07:01.276 seven o two about his oldest son. But there's something 0:07:01.316 --> 0:07:05.716 about Elon that's an X factor. What is that? Yeah, 0:07:05.756 --> 0:07:09.036 I would say that it's always been a very deep sea. 0:07:10.556 --> 0:07:12.836 When he was very small, for example, he would ask 0:07:12.956 --> 0:07:17.876 me where is the whole world? The story of Velan 0:07:17.916 --> 0:07:21.116 Musk's childhood, as it's usually told, is right out of 0:07:21.116 --> 0:07:24.956 science fiction from a genre noon as the Boy Wonder story. 0:07:25.436 --> 0:07:28.756 My favorites are the Tom Swift books series that started 0:07:28.916 --> 0:07:33.636 in nineteen ten. Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout, the 0:07:33.756 --> 0:07:38.996 speediest car on the road. Barton Swift, esteemed inventor, was 0:07:39.116 --> 0:07:43.476 drawing a complicated machine, pausing to make some intricate calculations 0:07:43.836 --> 0:07:49.996 when his young son interrupted him, I'm gonna build an 0:07:50.076 --> 0:07:55.396 electric runabout, Dad, m I don't take much stock in 0:07:55.516 --> 0:08:01.236 electric autos. Tom, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. All the 0:08:01.316 --> 0:08:05.836 electric runabouts I ever saw, while they were very nice cars, 0:08:06.316 --> 0:08:11.156 didn't seem able to go so very fast. Ah, very far, 0:08:12.036 --> 0:08:15.236 that's true, but it's because they didn't have the right 0:08:15.356 --> 0:08:18.396 kind of battery. It seems to me that if you 0:08:18.476 --> 0:08:21.036 put the right kind of battery into an automobile, it 0:08:21.116 --> 0:08:25.756 could scoot a lung pretty lively. That Tom Swift story 0:08:25.916 --> 0:08:28.556 was published more than a century ago, But the way 0:08:28.636 --> 0:08:31.876 Errol Musk tells it, Little Elon was that same boy Wonder. 0:08:32.276 --> 0:08:35.076 When the computers came out right in the beginning, he 0:08:35.236 --> 0:08:38.196 came to me and said, the would like to have 0:08:38.396 --> 0:08:44.236 one of these new computers. In nineteen eighty four, when 0:08:44.236 --> 0:08:46.996 Elon Musk was twelve, he sold a video game to 0:08:47.076 --> 0:08:51.076 PC Magazine for five hundred dollars. It's called blast Star 0:08:51.996 --> 0:08:57.196 Black Screen, little squary blobs, Space Invader style our mission 0:08:57.636 --> 0:09:01.956 destroy alien freighter carrying deadly hydrogen bombs and status beam machines. 0:09:05.036 --> 0:09:07.076 So don't get me wrong. Elon Musk really was a 0:09:07.116 --> 0:09:10.876 whiz kid. And when Musk tells his own origin story, 0:09:11.356 --> 0:09:14.476 like when he spoke at the Computer History Museum in California, 0:09:14.716 --> 0:09:16.996 that's how he tells it. I was very party bookers. 0:09:17.076 --> 0:09:18.556 I was reading all the time, so I was either 0:09:18.636 --> 0:09:21.716 reading or working on my computer or reading comics. He 0:09:21.836 --> 0:09:23.956 read a lot of books, but he says that one 0:09:23.996 --> 0:09:27.676 book above all became his guide for life, the Elon 0:09:27.756 --> 0:09:30.556 Musk Bible. I guess when I was twelve with the 0:09:30.596 --> 0:09:33.636 Tina had Company existential crisis, and I was reading various books. 0:09:34.036 --> 0:09:35.596 I'm trying to figure out the meaning of life. And 0:09:36.476 --> 0:09:38.356 we happen to have like some books by Nietzche and 0:09:38.356 --> 0:09:40.716 Schopenhauer in the house, which you should not read at 0:09:40.716 --> 0:09:48.636 age fourteen. It's really negative. Yeah, And I read The 0:09:48.716 --> 0:09:51.316 Hitchhiker's Guide the Galaxy. It was quite positive. I think 0:09:51.956 --> 0:09:54.996 in Douglas Adams is Hitchhiker's Guide. The people of megal 0:09:54.996 --> 0:09:57.876 Athia build an enormous computer to ask it a question 0:09:57.876 --> 0:10:01.716 about life, the universe and everything, and after thinking for 0:10:01.836 --> 0:10:06.876 millions of years, it answers forty two. Musk says that 0:10:06.956 --> 0:10:09.076 taught him a lesson a lot of times. The question 0:10:09.516 --> 0:10:11.796 is harder than the answer, and if you can properly 0:10:11.836 --> 0:10:14.516 phrase the question, then the answer is the easy part. 0:10:15.276 --> 0:10:18.316 The Hitchhiker's Guide didn't start out as a book. Adams 0:10:18.316 --> 0:10:21.476 wrote it for BBC Radio four, and starting in nineteen 0:10:21.556 --> 0:10:24.636 seventy eight it was broadcast on the BBC World Service, 0:10:24.916 --> 0:10:35.556 including Tupratoria. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. 0:10:35.596 --> 0:10:38.276 Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the 0:10:38.316 --> 0:10:42.436 great and glorious days of the former Galactic Empire, life 0:10:42.596 --> 0:10:48.036 was wild, rich, and on the whole tax free. Many men, 0:10:48.076 --> 0:10:51.356 of course, became extremely rich. But this was perfectly natural 0:10:51.356 --> 0:10:53.396 and nothing to be ashamed of, because no one was 0:10:53.436 --> 0:10:57.676 really poor, at least no one. We're speaking of. The 0:10:57.756 --> 0:11:02.636 Hitchhiker's Guide, that is, begins with an indictment of economic inequality. 0:11:04.196 --> 0:11:06.076 What was it like to listen to this in South 0:11:06.116 --> 0:11:10.956 Africa under apartheid. Musk hardly ever talks about apartheid, at 0:11:11.036 --> 0:11:13.836 least not publicly. I'm going to talk about it for 0:11:13.836 --> 0:11:16.796 a while here because it's a crucial piece of this history. 0:11:17.516 --> 0:11:20.556 But first, let me be really clear. White people who 0:11:20.636 --> 0:11:23.396 happened to grow up in South Africa under apartheid in 0:11:23.396 --> 0:11:27.596 the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties are not responsible for apartheid. 0:11:28.156 --> 0:11:31.756 Peter Thiel, another Silicon Valley entrepreneur and later a key 0:11:31.836 --> 0:11:35.036 business partner of Elon Musk's, also lived in South Africa 0:11:35.076 --> 0:11:38.836 for a while as a kid they were children. Also, 0:11:39.036 --> 0:11:42.396 Musk left South Africa when he was seventeen to avoid 0:11:42.436 --> 0:11:45.556 being conscripted into the army, the army that imposed and 0:11:45.716 --> 0:11:50.316 enforced the regime. I'm not placing blame here. Still, I 0:11:50.356 --> 0:11:52.676 do think there's a weird way in which the culture 0:11:52.676 --> 0:11:56.876 of apartheid found expression in the nineteen nineties and Silicon 0:11:56.996 --> 0:12:01.436 Valley's vision of the future. You've said that apartheid is 0:12:01.476 --> 0:12:03.996 a habit of mind. Can you tell me what you 0:12:04.036 --> 0:12:07.556 mean by that? I called up Jacob Glamini, a professor 0:12:07.596 --> 0:12:10.916 of African history at Princeton. He grew up in South Africa, 0:12:11.036 --> 0:12:14.836 and he's written beautifully and powerfully about apartheid. What I 0:12:14.876 --> 0:12:16.876 mean by that is that the party it was not 0:12:16.996 --> 0:12:20.516 just a social and political and economic system, but that 0:12:20.556 --> 0:12:25.556 it was also a cultural system which incarcated in South Africans, 0:12:25.596 --> 0:12:29.636 both black and white, patterns of behavior, ways of thinking. 0:12:30.396 --> 0:12:33.476 It's side to transform how people saw themselves, but also 0:12:33.516 --> 0:12:37.196 how they saw the world. The color question is rapidly 0:12:37.236 --> 0:12:43.236 increasing in seriousness and urgency. I consider apartheid to be 0:12:43.356 --> 0:12:50.676 South Africa's lost chance to remain a white man's country. Apartheid, 0:12:50.796 --> 0:12:54.596 which means a parthood, began in nineteen forty eight. That 0:12:54.676 --> 0:12:57.196 same year, in nineteen forty eight, Elon Musk's mother was 0:12:57.236 --> 0:13:01.236 born in Canada. Her father, J. N. Haldeman was an 0:13:01.356 --> 0:13:05.956 ardent conservative and anti communist. In nineteen fifty, Haldiman moved 0:13:05.996 --> 0:13:08.596 his family to South Africa. Was there a lot of 0:13:09.116 --> 0:13:12.676 immigration from saying North America to South Africa after apartheid 0:13:12.756 --> 0:13:16.156 was declared? I just find that like an odd journey 0:13:16.236 --> 0:13:20.036 for a family to make in nineteen fifty. Oh yeah, 0:13:20.076 --> 0:13:22.956 I think that is quite striking. There is this conscious 0:13:22.996 --> 0:13:27.236 effort and conscious attempt to recruit people to South Africa 0:13:27.356 --> 0:13:30.836 to beef up white numbers to a point where blacks 0:13:30.836 --> 0:13:33.716 would not be such a demographic threat. You know, here's 0:13:33.716 --> 0:13:38.676 a place with amazing sunshine, great weather, and you can 0:13:38.676 --> 0:13:43.196 actually live like a king or a queen. Elon Musk's 0:13:43.236 --> 0:13:46.396 mother published a memoir in twenty twenty. It's called A 0:13:46.476 --> 0:13:49.476 Woman Makes a Plan Advice for a lifetime of adventure, 0:13:49.556 --> 0:13:52.796 beauty and Success. A lot of the book is about 0:13:52.836 --> 0:13:55.116 growing up in South Africa in the nineteen fifties and 0:13:55.236 --> 0:13:58.476 nineteen sixties. She says her parents were persuaded to move 0:13:58.476 --> 0:14:01.356 there from Canada by missionaries who talked of its beauty. 0:14:02.156 --> 0:14:06.156 Not once does she mention apartheid. Domini says that's not 0:14:06.276 --> 0:14:10.036 unusual that the regime organized itself around acts of forgetting 0:14:10.316 --> 0:14:15.396 and a razure, including pretending the native population somehow didn't 0:14:15.436 --> 0:14:18.636 even exist. Unlike in the America's Right, you know, where 0:14:18.636 --> 0:14:22.996 the indigenous populations were annihilated, the South African gates is different. 0:14:23.076 --> 0:14:26.396 The vast majority of the population is not annihilated, and 0:14:26.556 --> 0:14:28.876 whatever you have to build has to be built around 0:14:28.876 --> 0:14:32.436 this idea that the natives have not disappeared. A resistance 0:14:32.476 --> 0:14:35.436 movement rose up led beginning in the nineteen sixties by 0:14:35.476 --> 0:14:42.076 a young lawyer, Nelson Mandela. The Africans require the franchise 0:14:42.676 --> 0:14:45.276 on the basis of one man, one vote. They're one 0:14:45.356 --> 0:14:50.636 political independence. Mandela was sent to prison in nineteen sixty three. Meanwhile, 0:14:50.916 --> 0:14:56.396 the resistance grew is Radio Freio, the voice of the 0:14:56.396 --> 0:15:00.316 African National Congress. The UN General Assembly denounced the apartheid 0:15:00.356 --> 0:15:04.436 regime in nineteen seventy three. Two years later, right about 0:15:04.436 --> 0:15:07.996 when Elon Musk was starting kindergarten, police open fire on 0:15:08.116 --> 0:15:11.236 thousands of school ldren during a protest, and so wadow 0:15:11.876 --> 0:15:17.196 we play in the yard, the school yard, in the 0:15:17.276 --> 0:15:22.116 pools of hitting creatures. These were black children. White children 0:15:22.236 --> 0:15:24.996 went to white schools. Black people had to pay for 0:15:24.996 --> 0:15:28.356 their education, but whites didn't. Some people were joking it 0:15:28.396 --> 0:15:31.236 was actually socialism for whites and capitalism for blacks, right, 0:15:31.676 --> 0:15:34.396 And that's how a party it actually justified itself that, 0:15:34.556 --> 0:15:38.876 you know, we create in a class of successful white people, 0:15:39.516 --> 0:15:42.996 people who ran construction businesses like Errol Musk. Elon's father 0:15:43.396 --> 0:15:45.716 made a lot of money in the apartheid era, building 0:15:45.836 --> 0:15:49.196 two of everything, one for blacks and one for whites. 0:15:49.876 --> 0:15:53.636 For whites, they built a fantasy world. Ideologically, I think 0:15:53.636 --> 0:15:56.116 one of the successes of a part aid was in 0:15:56.276 --> 0:15:59.196 making whites out off can't believe that everything they achieved 0:15:59.476 --> 0:16:02.876 was through individual initiative, and everything that they ever have 0:16:02.996 --> 0:16:06.396 got in life was through their own hard work, you know, 0:16:06.516 --> 0:16:08.916 never mind the fact that the system was designed to 0:16:09.356 --> 0:16:11.396 some ways gave them all the benefit and to give 0:16:11.396 --> 0:16:14.716 them all the resources to get on in life. It's 0:16:14.716 --> 0:16:17.636 so interesting because the darkness of that divide, you know, 0:16:17.676 --> 0:16:23.756 the rigidity of the separation, has so many earlier representations 0:16:23.756 --> 0:16:25.756 in the world of science fiction, right, like so much 0:16:25.796 --> 0:16:28.796 of H. G. Wells as science fiction is about what 0:16:28.916 --> 0:16:32.236 about a terrible, awful future in which we divide people 0:16:32.276 --> 0:16:34.356 into some who will live underground and do all of 0:16:34.356 --> 0:16:36.596 the work for us, and we will never see them, 0:16:36.596 --> 0:16:38.996 and we will pretend they don't even exist, and those 0:16:38.996 --> 0:16:40.556 of us who will live in the skies and in 0:16:40.596 --> 0:16:44.076 the clouds. And to me, sometimes when I think about 0:16:44.076 --> 0:16:48.436 what Silicon Valley is imagining, we will colonize Mars, and 0:16:48.516 --> 0:16:51.036 some people will go there who really need to be 0:16:51.356 --> 0:16:55.796 relieved of their experience on Earth. I mean, am I 0:16:55.876 --> 0:16:58.916 off base to say that some of that seems to 0:16:58.956 --> 0:17:04.636 revive these notions of very very strict hierarchies. I don't 0:17:04.676 --> 0:17:07.436 think you're off base at all, Joe. I mean, I 0:17:07.436 --> 0:17:09.436 think you've put your finger in it. And of course 0:17:09.436 --> 0:17:12.316 we don't want to instrumentalize this and see, you know, 0:17:12.356 --> 0:17:14.996 it does just caused an effect. But I think there's 0:17:15.036 --> 0:17:18.516 a strong case to be made for the connection between 0:17:18.716 --> 0:17:23.876 this a part of dystopia and this idealized version of 0:17:23.876 --> 0:17:26.596 a world where the elites don't have to share their 0:17:26.636 --> 0:17:32.196 oxygen with lesser beings. So I listened to The Hitchhiker's Guide, 0:17:32.236 --> 0:17:34.436 and I find it strange that Elon Musk is such 0:17:34.436 --> 0:17:36.756 a fan, because a lot of it sounds to me 0:17:36.876 --> 0:17:39.396 like an indictment of people just like him, or like 0:17:39.516 --> 0:17:42.836 Amazon's Jeff Bezos. The mega rich, with their privately owned 0:17:42.916 --> 0:17:46.836 rockets blasting off to other planets, and for these extremely 0:17:46.916 --> 0:17:50.396 rich merchants, life eventually became rather dull, and it seemed 0:17:50.436 --> 0:17:53.956 that none of the worlds they settled on was entirely satisfactory. 0:17:54.636 --> 0:17:57.596 Either the climate wasn't quite right in the later part 0:17:57.596 --> 0:18:00.596 of the afternoon, nor the day was half an hour 0:18:00.716 --> 0:18:04.196 too long, or the sea was just the wrong shade 0:18:04.196 --> 0:18:08.036 of pink. And thus where created the conditions for a 0:18:08.196 --> 0:18:14.076 staggering new form of industry, custom made luxury planet building. 0:18:15.796 --> 0:18:19.876 Also hear me out. I think the Hitchhiker's Guide, broadcast 0:18:19.916 --> 0:18:22.436 by the BBC in the nineteen seventies, just when the 0:18:22.476 --> 0:18:27.636 world was condemning apartheid, sounds quite specifically as though it's 0:18:27.636 --> 0:18:31.396 an indictment of apartheid like social and economic systems. And 0:18:31.516 --> 0:18:37.756 I don't think I'm overreading. Douglas Adams wrote Hitchhiker's Guide 0:18:37.756 --> 0:18:41.236 on herme's manual typewriter. One key is more worn down 0:18:41.276 --> 0:18:44.716 than the rest, the letter X. And you know what 0:18:44.836 --> 0:18:48.036 was on the side of that typewriter, a sticker. It 0:18:48.116 --> 0:18:56.876 says end apartheid. When Elon Musk started college at the 0:18:56.996 --> 0:19:01.076 University of Pretoria, apartheid was on the verge of collapse 0:19:01.396 --> 0:19:08.636 today if black and wide the lack of nine bapati. 0:19:10.756 --> 0:19:13.716 By then, in nineteen ninety, when Mandela was released after 0:19:13.796 --> 0:19:17.116 twenty seven years in prison, Elon Musk had left South 0:19:17.116 --> 0:19:23.396 Africa behind to launch his new life in North America. 0:19:26.676 --> 0:19:28.436 We have to get back in the rocket again to 0:19:28.516 --> 0:19:31.836 go still further back in time, two generations in fact, 0:19:32.316 --> 0:19:36.516 because after graduating, Musk traveled to Canada, where his maternal 0:19:36.556 --> 0:19:39.716 grandfather was from He wanted to get to the United States, 0:19:39.756 --> 0:19:42.876 but it was easier to get a Canadian passport. Having 0:19:42.876 --> 0:19:45.716 broken with his father, he flew to Montreal with nothing 0:19:45.756 --> 0:19:50.036 but a backpack, then hitchhiked to Saskatchewan, where his grandfather 0:19:50.076 --> 0:19:53.156 had lived before moving the family to South Africa. And 0:19:53.236 --> 0:19:56.196 it's this grandfather, j Nn Haldeman, who I want to 0:19:56.196 --> 0:19:59.556 look at next, because before he left Canada in the 0:19:59.636 --> 0:20:02.476 nineteen thirties, he'd been a leader of a strange sci 0:20:02.516 --> 0:20:08.116 fi inspired movement known as technocracy. It bears an uncanny 0:20:08.156 --> 0:20:11.556 resemblance to some things going on today in Silicon Valley, 0:20:12.116 --> 0:20:18.836 repackaged as existential risk futurism. What technocracy ink is chiefly 0:20:18.916 --> 0:20:22.716 engaged in now is the organization of an army of 0:20:22.836 --> 0:20:27.916 trained men and women who, when the present interference controls 0:20:27.956 --> 0:20:32.636 break down and the intricate machinery of production and distribution 0:20:32.796 --> 0:20:36.116 is in danger of stopping, will be able to prevent 0:20:36.196 --> 0:20:40.356 that catastrophe before it is too late. So this sounds 0:20:40.396 --> 0:20:43.796 like science fiction, but this really happened. People in the 0:20:43.836 --> 0:20:48.756 technocracy movement, they call themselves technocrats, wanted engineers and scientists 0:20:48.796 --> 0:20:52.356 to run governments. They took their inspiration from science fiction, 0:20:52.796 --> 0:20:56.116 where engineers and scientists were always solving problems. They were 0:20:56.156 --> 0:21:01.116 suspicious of democracy and also of capitalism. By price system 0:21:01.356 --> 0:21:04.836 is not meant merely the capitalistic system, which is only 0:21:04.916 --> 0:21:08.796 one variety of the species. It means the collapse and 0:21:09.116 --> 0:21:13.916 complete obsolescence of the entire method of distributing goods and 0:21:14.156 --> 0:21:18.276 services by means of a price. There will be no 0:21:18.396 --> 0:21:25.316 place for politics or politicians, finance or financiers. Rackets are racketeers. 0:21:26.596 --> 0:21:30.316 Grant Whiteoff teaches Digital Humanities and American Studies at Princeton. 0:21:30.676 --> 0:21:33.316 He says that technocracy movement started in New York in 0:21:33.436 --> 0:21:36.876 nineteen nineteen with a guy who ran a floor waxing business. 0:21:37.276 --> 0:21:40.676 His idea was that engineers had these unique qualities that 0:21:40.716 --> 0:21:43.716 would somehow make them good social leaders. They could assess 0:21:43.756 --> 0:21:46.756 a situation from above, they would come up with much 0:21:46.756 --> 0:21:53.596 more rational or economic solutions than politicians or economic leaders would. Then, 0:21:53.676 --> 0:21:55.996 with the stock market crash of nineteen twenty nine and 0:21:56.036 --> 0:21:59.636 the depression that followed, democracies were collapsing all over the world. 0:22:00.156 --> 0:22:03.676 Technocracy really had its moment. Local chapters at that point 0:22:03.756 --> 0:22:07.436 had sprung up everywhere across the US and Canada, and 0:22:07.716 --> 0:22:11.676 each of those chapters art putting forward their own competing ideas. 0:22:11.996 --> 0:22:15.396 There's an invented unit of measure called the ERG. This 0:22:15.436 --> 0:22:18.556 is one solution that we replace currency with units of energy, 0:22:18.796 --> 0:22:22.556 depended on how much energy a single worker is capable 0:22:22.556 --> 0:22:25.116 of producing in a given day and how much they 0:22:25.156 --> 0:22:28.276 should get in return for that work. As far as 0:22:28.316 --> 0:22:30.716 I can tell, it's at this point that Elon Musk's 0:22:30.716 --> 0:22:34.556 grandfather got involved with technocracy. He lost his farm during 0:22:34.556 --> 0:22:38.236 the depression and ever after didn't believe in banks or banking. 0:22:38.756 --> 0:22:41.236 A lot of people felt that way, and some of 0:22:41.236 --> 0:22:43.956 them were drawn into the set of ideas about a 0:22:43.996 --> 0:22:46.556 different way of thinking about money. And some of the 0:22:46.636 --> 0:22:49.316 chapters start doing odd things to kind of get their 0:22:49.356 --> 0:22:54.876 message across. They start wearing these identical gray uniforms, driving 0:22:55.156 --> 0:22:59.836 these gray cars in these large parades, blasting speeches out 0:22:59.836 --> 0:23:04.716 of megaphones. They adopt this Yin Yang symbol on all 0:23:04.716 --> 0:23:07.916 of their uniforms and all of their signs. I'm kind 0:23:07.956 --> 0:23:09.836 of pulled into a different directions, you know. On the 0:23:09.876 --> 0:23:13.996 one hand, I just I just think they're nuts, And 0:23:14.156 --> 0:23:16.356 on the other hand, it seems to reflect an enormous 0:23:16.356 --> 0:23:19.676 amount of anguish and uncertainty. But it has a kind 0:23:19.676 --> 0:23:22.796 of quasi fascistic feel to me. How should we read that? 0:23:23.236 --> 0:23:25.276 Technocracy from the start was caught up in a lot 0:23:25.316 --> 0:23:29.116 of different science fictional imaginaries that it didn't always have 0:23:29.316 --> 0:23:34.476 full perspective on. They want to write themselves into these 0:23:34.516 --> 0:23:39.356 gleaming science fictional futures that they are obsessed with, but 0:23:39.596 --> 0:23:42.396 without actually thinking through what that would mean in practice, 0:23:42.836 --> 0:23:45.756 what it would mean to replace an entire system of 0:23:45.836 --> 0:23:51.276 government some of what Elon Musk and other Silicon Valley 0:23:51.356 --> 0:23:55.076 entrepreneurs now indoors. There's something of a family likeness to 0:23:55.116 --> 0:23:58.956 the technocracy movement, a fixation on futurism, a kind of 0:23:59.076 --> 0:24:03.836 radical rationalism, the idea that technological innovation can solve political 0:24:03.876 --> 0:24:06.836 and social problems, a critique of paper currency and the 0:24:06.876 --> 0:24:11.836 price system. Also, for some reason, technocrats objected to personal names. 0:24:12.356 --> 0:24:16.396 For instance, one technocrat renamed himself one X one eight 0:24:16.516 --> 0:24:20.556 zero nine x five six, like Elon Musk's youngest son, 0:24:20.916 --> 0:24:24.756 a baby named x Ash twelve or X for short. 0:24:27.516 --> 0:24:30.596 Elon Musk, after that year in Saskatchewan, spent two years 0:24:30.636 --> 0:24:34.716 at Queen's University in Ontario. Then he transferred to the 0:24:34.796 --> 0:24:39.076 University of Pennsylvania, graduating with degrees in economics and physics. 0:24:39.516 --> 0:24:42.556 He spent a summer interning at dot COM's in Silicon Valley, 0:24:42.956 --> 0:24:49.556 where things were getting wild. It was a gold rush. 0:24:49.756 --> 0:24:52.996 In nineteen ninety five, the Internet opened to commercial traffic 0:24:53.356 --> 0:24:56.436 for the first time. You could buy stuff online. But 0:24:56.556 --> 0:25:00.716 how Musk started a PhD program in material science engineering 0:25:00.716 --> 0:25:04.156 at Stanford but dropped out after two days. As he 0:25:04.276 --> 0:25:08.036 later told CNN back in ninety five, they weren't for 0:25:08.196 --> 0:25:11.396 many people on the Internet, and certainly nobody was making 0:25:11.436 --> 0:25:14.516 any money at all. Most people thought the Internet was 0:25:14.556 --> 0:25:18.516 going to be a fat elon. Musk started his first company, 0:25:18.756 --> 0:25:22.356 zip two, with his brother and a friend. Everyone at 0:25:22.356 --> 0:25:24.196 the time was trying to engage in what was called 0:25:24.436 --> 0:25:29.356 disruptive innovation, which means destroy existing industries by doing things 0:25:29.396 --> 0:25:34.716 completely differently online. Zip two was a newspaper industry disruptive innovation. 0:25:34.916 --> 0:25:38.996 It helped newspapers make the transition to online publishing, though 0:25:39.036 --> 0:25:43.036 it also contributed to a crisis in journalism. All sorts 0:25:43.036 --> 0:25:47.076 of people founded news aggregators and news feeds. Musk made 0:25:47.076 --> 0:25:50.396 his first fortune in nineteen ninety nine. He sold Zip 0:25:50.396 --> 0:25:55.116 two for three hundred million dollars cash receiving cash is cash. 0:25:55.116 --> 0:25:57.876 I mean, those are just a large number of Ben Franklin's. 0:25:58.556 --> 0:26:02.276 He then turned to thinking about online money technocrats. Like 0:26:02.316 --> 0:26:06.316 his grandfather had wanted to abolish the price system, Musk 0:26:06.596 --> 0:26:10.676 wanted to restructure the system of exchange itself. This planet 0:26:10.716 --> 0:26:13.836 has or had a problem, which was this, most of 0:26:13.836 --> 0:26:16.356 the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much 0:26:16.356 --> 0:26:19.876 of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, 0:26:20.036 --> 0:26:22.916 but most of these were largely concerned with the movements 0:26:22.916 --> 0:26:26.196 of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because 0:26:26.236 --> 0:26:29.116 on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of 0:26:29.156 --> 0:26:33.516 paper that were unhappy. In nineteen ninety nine, Musk founded 0:26:33.556 --> 0:26:37.436 a new company, X dot com. So this is an ATM. 0:26:37.596 --> 0:26:40.676 All we're going to do is transform the traditional banking industry. 0:26:41.236 --> 0:26:44.556 Musk put millions of dollars into x dot com. He said, 0:26:44.796 --> 0:26:47.356 selling one business and starting the next was like a 0:26:47.436 --> 0:26:50.116 high stakes poker game. You win a big pot, you 0:26:50.196 --> 0:26:54.436 risk it all all over again. This is called serial entrepreneurship. 0:26:54.916 --> 0:26:57.956 Start it, sell it, raise venture capital to start the 0:26:57.956 --> 0:27:00.716