WEBVTT - Episode 2: Dimension X 0:00:15.436 --> 0:00:15.876 Pushkin. 0:00:21.996 --> 0:00:26.356 Elon Musk is the richest person on the planet. Long 0:00:26.396 --> 0:00:30.036 before Donald Trump appointed him to run DOGE, a department 0:00:30.116 --> 0:00:34.516 of government efficiency, Musk had plans. Plans to save the 0:00:34.556 --> 0:00:38.676 world from climate catastrophe with electric cars and solar panels 0:00:38.676 --> 0:00:42.916 and underground tunnels, Plans to colonize Mars, Plans to build 0:00:42.996 --> 0:00:46.396 chips to put in people's brains. He is followed by 0:00:46.436 --> 0:00:49.756 more than two hundred million people on social media. He 0:00:49.836 --> 0:00:53.396 has two ex wives and eleven children, including a son 0:00:53.876 --> 0:00:57.716 named x The bare facts of Musk's life, the way 0:00:57.756 --> 0:01:00.836 they're usually told make him sound like a fictional character, 0:01:01.316 --> 0:01:02.916 a comic book superhero. 0:01:03.556 --> 0:01:07.116 But what's the real story, the actual history behind the 0:01:07.156 --> 0:01:16.156 comic book. Welcome to X Man, the Elon. 0:01:15.876 --> 0:01:17.676 Musk origin Story. 0:01:17.876 --> 0:01:18.676 I'm Jill Lapour. 0:01:19.436 --> 0:01:22.756 I'm a professor of history and law at Harvard. For 0:01:22.796 --> 0:01:26.076 a long time, I've been studying the relationship between technological 0:01:26.236 --> 0:01:30.076 and political change. I'm fascinated by visions of the future 0:01:30.396 --> 0:01:34.956 in political discourse, in literature, in science fiction, and even 0:01:34.996 --> 0:01:39.796 comic books. This series, I'm exploring a new kind of capitalism. 0:01:39.836 --> 0:01:47.236 I call Muskism extravagant extreme capitalism, extraterrestrial capitalism where stock 0:01:47.316 --> 0:01:51.756 prices are driven by earnings but also by fantasies. Fantasies 0:01:51.796 --> 0:01:55.076 that you can find in blockbuster superhero movies, but that 0:01:55.196 --> 0:01:57.436 come from science fiction, some of it. 0:01:57.916 --> 0:02:00.396 A century old. 0:02:02.116 --> 0:02:05.796 Elon Musk runs a rocket company. It's called space X, 0:02:06.356 --> 0:02:11.276 his artificial intelligence company x AI, the name he gave 0:02:11.316 --> 0:02:15.836 to Twitter after he bought it. X. Musk loves the 0:02:15.916 --> 0:02:20.316 letter X, one of his first big startups, X dot com. 0:02:20.996 --> 0:02:24.076 X is sexy as an X rated, but X is 0:02:24.116 --> 0:02:28.996 sexy because X means mysterious and X means mysterious because 0:02:28.996 --> 0:02:32.036 In sixteen thirty seven, when Renee Descartes sat down to 0:02:32.036 --> 0:02:35.476 write a treatise on geometry, he decided to use X, Y, 0:02:35.516 --> 0:02:39.116 and Z for variables, but his printer setting the type 0:02:39.596 --> 0:02:42.876 kept running out of ys and z's but not x's 0:02:42.916 --> 0:02:45.436 because you don't use X very often in French, so 0:02:45.476 --> 0:02:53.996 he used mostly x's X the unknown. In the twentieth century, 0:02:54.556 --> 0:02:57.316 X became science fiction writer's favorite letter of. 0:02:57.316 --> 0:02:59.236 The alphabet. 0:03:05.556 --> 0:03:09.116 X for extraterrestrial, as in the film The Strange World 0:03:09.236 --> 0:03:10.196 of Planet X. 0:03:10.476 --> 0:03:13.676 Be prepared for a fantastic adventure into. 0:03:13.396 --> 0:03:19.236 The future, a monstrous world of terror and chaos. By 0:03:19.276 --> 0:03:23.956 the nineteen nineties x men, xbox, x files, and then 0:03:24.316 --> 0:03:30.876 Elon Muskin x, dot com, SpaceX. Something strange was happening 0:03:30.876 --> 0:03:33.476 to capitalism. As the gap between the rich and the 0:03:33.476 --> 0:03:37.316 poor got wider and wider, the claims of corporations got 0:03:37.356 --> 0:03:40.516 more and more grandiose. Google opened an R and D 0:03:40.596 --> 0:03:44.036 division called X, whose aim was to solve some of 0:03:44.076 --> 0:03:49.036 the world's hardest problems. Tech companies started talking about their mission, 0:03:49.076 --> 0:03:53.196 and their mission was always magnificently inflated, transforming the future 0:03:53.236 --> 0:03:56.516 of work, connecting all of humanity, making. 0:03:56.236 --> 0:03:57.316 The world a better place. 0:03:58.836 --> 0:04:02.396 Scholars kept groping for adjectives to describe these new brands 0:04:02.396 --> 0:04:08.596 of capitalism. Surveillance capitalism, platform capitalism, identity capitalism, What about 0:04:08.676 --> 0:04:15.196 just capitalism X for extreme extravagant existential A capitalism in 0:04:15.196 --> 0:04:20.276 which companies worry very publicly and quite feverishly about planetary disaster, 0:04:20.916 --> 0:04:23.956 about the all too real catastrophe of climate change, but 0:04:24.036 --> 0:04:27.556 also about all sorts of so called existential risks to 0:04:27.596 --> 0:04:30.796 the future of the human race, so that they can 0:04:30.876 --> 0:04:35.716 save us all. A capitalism animated by catastrophe, A capitalism 0:04:35.796 --> 0:04:40.556 driven by science fiction and driven to by the disavowal 0:04:40.676 --> 0:04:41.116 of its. 0:04:40.956 --> 0:04:47.596 Own origins to recover that history. 0:04:47.956 --> 0:04:51.516 Each episode of X Men were blasting off to the past. 0:04:52.196 --> 0:04:59.036 This episode is called Dimension X. Our first destination and 0:04:59.076 --> 0:05:02.596 time and space is South Africa in the nineteen seventies. 0:05:03.476 --> 0:05:06.756 Elon Musk was born in Pretoria in nineteen seventy one. 0:05:07.356 --> 0:05:10.676 His father, Errol, was an engineer who owned a construction business. 0:05:11.116 --> 0:05:13.836 His mother was a former model. They had three kids. 0:05:14.156 --> 0:05:17.116 Elon was the oldest. His parents got divorced when he 0:05:17.196 --> 0:05:20.556 was still a boy. Eryl Musk has lately become a 0:05:20.556 --> 0:05:26.076 prominent figure in his son's shadow. Outspoken and controversial, He's 0:05:26.116 --> 0:05:29.916 compared the jailed far right activist Tommy Robinson to Nelson 0:05:29.956 --> 0:05:34.316 Mandela and predicted Robinson would one day be Britain's Prime Minister. 0:05:35.436 --> 0:05:39.236 Eryl Musk's relationship with his oldest son is fraud, but 0:05:39.316 --> 0:05:42.876 he's always maintained that Elon is a genius, as he 0:05:42.876 --> 0:05:45.636 did about a decade ago during an interview with South 0:05:45.636 --> 0:05:47.556 Africa's Radio seven oh two. 0:05:47.876 --> 0:05:50.396 Is something about Elon that's an X factor? 0:05:51.116 --> 0:05:54.836 What is that? Yeah? I would say that he's always 0:05:54.916 --> 0:05:56.396 been a very deep thinker. 0:05:57.236 --> 0:05:57.436 Yeah. 0:05:57.516 --> 0:05:59.996 When he was very small, for example, he would ask me, 0:06:00.996 --> 0:06:02.396 where is the whole world? 0:06:03.076 --> 0:06:05.916 The story of Elon Musk's childhood, as it's usually told, 0:06:06.356 --> 0:06:09.036 is right out of science fiction, from a genre known 0:06:09.356 --> 0:06:12.636 as the boy Wonder story. My favorites are the Tom 0:06:12.716 --> 0:06:15.916 Swift books series that started in nineteen ten. 0:06:16.676 --> 0:06:20.996 Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout, the speediest car on 0:06:21.076 --> 0:06:26.956 the road. Barton Swift, esteemed inventor, was drawing a complicated machine, 0:06:27.316 --> 0:06:30.996 pausing to make some intricate calculations when his young son 0:06:31.196 --> 0:06:38.516 interrupted him. 0:06:35.196 --> 0:06:37.316 I'm gonna build an electric runabout. 0:06:37.396 --> 0:06:43.796 Dad. Hmmm, I don't take much stock in electric autos. Tom. 0:06:43.836 --> 0:06:47.636 All the electric runabouts I ever saw didn't seem able 0:06:47.676 --> 0:06:51.796 to go so very fast, oh very far. 0:06:52.396 --> 0:06:55.636 That's true, but it's because they didn't have the right 0:06:55.716 --> 0:06:58.756 kind of battery. It seems to me that if you 0:06:58.836 --> 0:07:01.436 put the right kind of battery into an automobile, it 0:07:01.476 --> 0:07:03.676 could scoot along pretty lively. 0:07:05.036 --> 0:07:08.196 That Tom Swift story was published more than a century ago. 0:07:08.476 --> 0:07:10.956 But the way well Musk tells it, little Elon was 0:07:10.996 --> 0:07:12.316 that same boy wonder. 0:07:12.516 --> 0:07:15.356 When the computers came out right in the beginning, he 0:07:15.436 --> 0:07:18.476 came to me and said he would like to have 0:07:18.636 --> 0:07:22.316 one of these new computers. 0:07:23.636 --> 0:07:26.396 In nineteen eighty four, when Elon Musk was twelve, he 0:07:26.476 --> 0:07:30.116 sold a video game to PC magazine for five hundred dollars. 0:07:30.436 --> 0:07:36.436 It's called Blastar Black Screen, little squary blobs, Space Invader 0:07:36.476 --> 0:07:41.156 style our mission destroy alien freighter carrying deadly hydrogen bombs 0:07:41.156 --> 0:07:46.276 and status beam machines. So don't get me wrong, Elon 0:07:46.396 --> 0:07:49.596 Musk really was a whiz kid. And when Elon Musk 0:07:49.636 --> 0:07:52.316 tells his own origin story, like when he spoke at 0:07:52.356 --> 0:07:55.356 the Computer History Museum in California, that's how. 0:07:55.196 --> 0:07:55.716 He tells it. 0:07:56.076 --> 0:07:57.676 I was very prairie booker, so I was reading all 0:07:57.716 --> 0:08:00.236 the time. So I was either reading, working on my computer, 0:08:00.356 --> 0:08:01.476 or reading comics. 0:08:01.796 --> 0:08:03.796 He read a lot of books, but he says that 0:08:03.876 --> 0:08:07.356 one book above all became his guide for life, the 0:08:07.436 --> 0:08:08.596 Elon Musk Bible. 0:08:09.236 --> 0:08:12.516 When I was twelve or thirteen, a head company existential crisis, 0:08:12.516 --> 0:08:14.876 and I was reading various books trying to figure out 0:08:14.876 --> 0:08:17.356 the meaning of life. And we happened to have like 0:08:17.596 --> 0:08:19.916 some books by Nietzschen Schopenhauer in the house, which you 0:08:19.956 --> 0:08:25.196 should not read at age fourteen is bad, it's really negative. 0:08:28.316 --> 0:08:30.396 Then I read The Hitchhiker's Guide the galaxyat which was 0:08:30.516 --> 0:08:31.556 quite positive, I think. 0:08:32.076 --> 0:08:35.436 In Douglas Adams is Hitchhiker's Guide, the people of Megalithia 0:08:35.556 --> 0:08:38.596 built an enormous computer to ask it a question about life, 0:08:38.876 --> 0:08:42.876 the universe and everything, and after thinking for millions of years, 0:08:42.876 --> 0:08:44.756 it answers forty two. 0:08:45.636 --> 0:08:47.516 Musk says that taught him a. 0:08:47.556 --> 0:08:50.196 Lesson a lot of times, the question is hotter than 0:08:50.236 --> 0:08:52.756 the answer, and if you can properly phrase the question, 0:08:53.196 --> 0:08:54.956 then the answer is the easy part. 0:08:55.156 --> 0:08:58.116 The Hitchhiker's Guide didn't start out as a book. Adams 0:08:58.116 --> 0:09:01.276 wrote it for BBC Radio four, and starting in nineteen 0:09:01.356 --> 0:09:04.476 seventy eight it was broadcast on the BBC World Service, 0:09:04.796 --> 0:09:08.316 including to Pretoria l What was. 0:09:10.996 --> 0:09:15.716 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams? Far 0:09:15.796 --> 0:09:18.436 back in the mists of ancient time, in the great 0:09:18.476 --> 0:09:23.716 and glorious days of the former Galactic Empire, life was wild, rich, 0:09:23.996 --> 0:09:28.236 and on the whole tax free. Many men, of course, 0:09:28.276 --> 0:09:31.556 became extremely rich, but this was perfectly natural and nothing 0:09:31.596 --> 0:09:33.836 to be ashamed of, because no one was really poor, 0:09:33.876 --> 0:09:35.476 at least no one worth. Speaking of. 0:09:37.956 --> 0:09:41.756 The Hitchhiker's Guide, that is, begins with an indictment of 0:09:41.756 --> 0:09:44.916 economic inequality. What was it like to listen to this 0:09:44.996 --> 0:09:50.596 in South Africa under apartheid. Musk hardly ever talks about apartheid. 0:09:50.156 --> 0:09:52.636 At least not publicly. I'm going to. 0:09:52.556 --> 0:09:54.596 Talk about it for a while here because it's a 0:09:54.636 --> 0:09:57.756 crucial piece of this history. But first, let me be 0:09:57.836 --> 0:10:01.116 really clear. White people who happened to grow up in 0:10:01.116 --> 0:10:04.156 South Africa under apartheid in the nineteen seventies and nineteen 0:10:04.196 --> 0:10:08.916 eighties are not responsible for apartheid. Peter Teel, another Silicon 0:10:09.436 --> 0:10:12.716 entrepreneur and later a key business partner of Elon Musk's, 0:10:13.156 --> 0:10:15.596 also lived in South Africa for a while as a kid. 0:10:16.236 --> 0:10:17.196 They were children. 0:10:18.036 --> 0:10:21.436 Also, Musk left South Africa when he was seventeen to 0:10:21.516 --> 0:10:24.956 avoid being conscripted into the army, the army that imposed 0:10:24.996 --> 0:10:29.636 and enforced the regime. I'm not placing blame here. Still, 0:10:29.756 --> 0:10:31.756 I do think there's a weird way in which the 0:10:31.796 --> 0:10:35.836 culture of apartheid found expression in the nineteen nineties in 0:10:35.916 --> 0:10:37.676 Silicon Valley's Vision. 0:10:37.476 --> 0:10:38.116 Of the Future. 0:10:38.196 --> 0:10:40.436 You know, you've said that apartheid is a habit of mind. 0:10:40.636 --> 0:10:43.316 Can you tell me what you mean by that? I 0:10:43.356 --> 0:10:46.956 called up Jacob Glamini, a professor of African History at Princeton. 0:10:47.476 --> 0:10:50.276 He grew up in South Africa, and he's written beautifully 0:10:50.316 --> 0:10:51.996 and powerfully about apartheid. 0:10:52.276 --> 0:10:54.276 What I mean by that is that so the partid 0:10:54.436 --> 0:10:58.076 was not just a social and political and economic system, 0:10:58.076 --> 0:11:01.836 but that it was also a cultural system which inculcated 0:11:02.116 --> 0:11:06.156 in South Africans, both black and white, patterns of behavior, 0:11:06.476 --> 0:11:10.876 ways of thinking. It's side to transform how people saw themselves, 0:11:10.876 --> 0:11:12.356 but also how they saw the world. 0:11:12.876 --> 0:11:17.196 The color question is rapidly increasing in seriousness and urgency. 0:11:18.276 --> 0:11:22.796 I consider a Partheight to be South Africa's lost chance 0:11:23.356 --> 0:11:25.356 to remain a white man's country. 0:11:27.116 --> 0:11:31.676 Apartheid, which means aparthood, began in nineteen forty eight. That 0:11:31.756 --> 0:11:34.556 same year, nineteen forty eight, Elon Musk's mother was born 0:11:34.596 --> 0:11:38.676 in Canada. Her father, jay N. Haldeman, was an ardent 0:11:38.756 --> 0:11:43.156 conservative and anti communist. In nineteen fifty, Haldeman moved his 0:11:43.196 --> 0:11:46.716 family to South Africa. Was there a lot of immigration 0:11:46.836 --> 0:11:50.556 from say North America to South Africa after apartheid was declared? 0:11:51.156 --> 0:11:53.636 I just find that like an odd journey for a 0:11:53.676 --> 0:11:55.236 family to make in nineteen fifty. 0:11:55.716 --> 0:11:59.356 Oh yeah, I think that is quite striking. There is 0:11:59.436 --> 0:12:03.596 this conscious airport and conscious attempt to recruit people to 0:12:03.756 --> 0:12:06.676 South Africa to beef up white numbers to a point 0:12:06.716 --> 0:12:10.556 where blacks would not be such a demographic threat. You know, 0:12:10.636 --> 0:12:14.556 here's a place, you know, with amazing sunshine, great weather, 0:12:15.316 --> 0:12:18.876 and you can actually live like a king or a queen. 0:12:19.716 --> 0:12:23.076 Elon Musk's mother published a memoir in twenty twenty. It's 0:12:23.116 --> 0:12:26.156 called A Woman Makes a Plan Advice for a lifetime 0:12:26.156 --> 0:12:29.796 of adventure, beauty and Success. A lot of the book 0:12:29.836 --> 0:12:31.876 is about growing up in South Africa in the nineteen 0:12:31.916 --> 0:12:35.476 fifties and nineteen sixties. She says her parents were persuaded 0:12:35.516 --> 0:12:38.076 to move there from Canada by missionaries who talked of 0:12:38.116 --> 0:12:43.036 its beauty. Not once does she mention apartheid. Domini says 0:12:43.156 --> 0:12:46.676 that's not unusual that the regime organized itself around acts 0:12:46.716 --> 0:12:52.436 of forgetting and erasure, including pretending the native population somehow 0:12:52.436 --> 0:12:53.636 didn't even exist. 0:12:53.956 --> 0:12:56.556 Unlike in the Americas, right, you know, where the indigenous 0:12:56.556 --> 0:13:00.516 populations were annihilated, the South Afcana Gas is different. The 0:13:00.596 --> 0:13:04.276 vast majority of the population is not annihilated, and whatever 0:13:04.316 --> 0:13:06.276 you have to build has to be built around this 0:13:06.356 --> 0:13:08.676 idea that the natives have not disappeared. 0:13:09.196 --> 0:13:12.156 A resistance movement rose up, led beginning in the nineteen 0:13:12.196 --> 0:13:14.916 sixties by a young lawyer, Nelson Mandela. 0:13:15.476 --> 0:13:21.316 The Africans require the franchise on the basis. 0:13:20.916 --> 0:13:22.156 Of one man, one vote. 0:13:22.356 --> 0:13:23.836 They won political independence. 0:13:24.596 --> 0:13:28.196 Mandela was sent to prison in nineteen sixty two. Meanwhile, 0:13:28.436 --> 0:13:29.716 the resistance grew. 0:13:31.236 --> 0:13:31.836 Radioprio. 0:13:32.916 --> 0:13:35.956 The Boys of the African National Congress, the U and 0:13:36.036 --> 0:13:39.396 General Assembly denounced the apartheid regime in nineteen seventy three. 0:13:40.316 --> 0:13:43.836 Two years later, right about when Elon Musk was starting kindergarten, 0:13:44.236 --> 0:13:47.236 police opened fire on thousands of school children during a 0:13:47.276 --> 0:13:50.116 protest and Soweto were playing. 0:13:49.916 --> 0:13:52.996 In the yard in the school yard and the stituating 0:13:53.036 --> 0:13:55.556 Atrendo in the process. 0:13:55.236 --> 0:13:56.276 Hitting three kids. 0:13:57.116 --> 0:14:00.796 These were black children. White children went to white schools. 0:14:01.156 --> 0:14:03.796 Black people had to pay for their education, but whites didn't. 0:14:04.396 --> 0:14:06.956 Some people were jogging. It was actually socialism for whites 0:14:06.996 --> 0:14:10.196 and capitalism for blacks. Right, That's how a party it 0:14:10.236 --> 0:14:13.836 actually justified itself that you know, we are creating a 0:14:13.996 --> 0:14:16.636 class of successful white people. 0:14:16.956 --> 0:14:20.396 People who ran construction businesses like Eryl Musk. Elon's father 0:14:20.796 --> 0:14:23.156 made a lot of money in the apartheid era, building 0:14:23.276 --> 0:14:26.596 two of everything, one for blacks and one for whites. 0:14:27.316 --> 0:14:29.796 For whites, they built a fantasy. 0:14:29.356 --> 0:14:32.036 World ideologically, I think one of the successes of a 0:14:32.116 --> 0:14:35.476 part daid was in making white South often believe that 0:14:35.596 --> 0:14:39.236 everything they achieved was through individual initiative, and everything that 0:14:39.276 --> 0:14:43.276 they ever got in life was through their own hard work, 0:14:43.636 --> 0:14:45.516 you know, never mind the fact that the system was 0:14:45.556 --> 0:14:48.316 designed to in some ways give them all the benefit 0:14:48.396 --> 0:14:51.396 and to give them all the resources to gether in life. 0:14:51.956 --> 0:14:55.076 It's so interesting because the starkness of that divide, you know, 0:14:55.116 --> 0:15:01.196 the rigidity of the separation, has so many earlier representations 0:15:01.196 --> 0:15:03.156 in the world of science fiction, right, Like so much 0:15:03.196 --> 0:15:06.596 of H. G. Wells's science fiction is about what about 0:15:06.596 --> 0:15:09.916 a terrible, awful future in which we divide people into 0:15:09.956 --> 0:15:11.836 some who will live underground and do all of the 0:15:11.916 --> 0:15:14.076 work for us, and we will never see them, and 0:15:14.116 --> 0:15:16.476 we will pretend they don't even exist, and those of 0:15:16.556 --> 0:15:18.636 us who will live in the skies and in the clouds. 0:15:18.676 --> 0:15:22.356 And to me, sometimes when I think about what Silicon 0:15:22.436 --> 0:15:25.676 Valley is imagining, we will colonize Mars, and some people 0:15:25.716 --> 0:15:28.796 will go there who really need to be relieved of. 0:15:28.796 --> 0:15:30.516 Their experience on Earth. 0:15:31.716 --> 0:15:33.836 I mean, am I off base to say that some 0:15:33.916 --> 0:15:38.996 of that seems to revive these notions of very very 0:15:38.996 --> 0:15:40.156 strict hierarchies. 0:15:40.796 --> 0:15:43.956 I don't think you off based at all, Jill. I mean, 0:15:44.116 --> 0:15:45.956 I think you've put your finger on it. And of 0:15:45.996 --> 0:15:49.076 course we don't want to instrumentalize this and see you know, 0:15:49.156 --> 0:15:51.756 it has just cause an effect. But I think there's 0:15:51.796 --> 0:15:55.316 a strong case to be made for the connection between 0:15:55.516 --> 0:16:01.156 the Sabarti dystopia and this idealized version of a world 0:16:01.196 --> 0:16:04.516 where the elites don't have to share their oxygen with 0:16:05.116 --> 0:16:06.036 lesser beings. 0:16:06.876 --> 0:16:09.556 So I listened to The Hitchhiker's Guide, and I find 0:16:09.596 --> 0:16:11.516 it strange that the Elon Musk is such a fan, 0:16:12.236 --> 0:16:13.956 because a lot of it sounds to me like an 0:16:13.956 --> 0:16:17.556 indictment of people just like him, or like Amazon's Jeff Bezos. 0:16:17.556 --> 0:16:20.956 The mega rich, with their privately owned rockets blasting off 0:16:20.956 --> 0:16:23.196 to other planets. 0:16:22.396 --> 0:16:26.436 And for these extremely rich merchants, life eventually became rather dull, 0:16:26.516 --> 0:16:28.796 and it seemed that none of the worlds they settled 0:16:28.796 --> 0:16:33.516 on was entirely satisfactory. Either the climate wasn't quite right 0:16:33.556 --> 0:16:36.516 in the later part of the afternoon, or the day 0:16:36.676 --> 0:16:39.116 was half an hour too long, or the sea was 0:16:39.516 --> 0:16:43.236 just the wrong shade of pink, and thus where it 0:16:43.316 --> 0:16:47.316 created the conditions for a staggering new form of industry, 0:16:48.316 --> 0:16:50.836 custom made luxury planet building. 0:16:52.556 --> 0:16:56.596 Also hear me out, I think the Hitchhiker's Guide, broadcast 0:16:56.676 --> 0:16:59.196 by the BBC in the nineteen seventies, just when the 0:16:59.236 --> 0:17:04.396 world was condemning apartheid, sounds quite specifically as though it's 0:17:04.436 --> 0:17:08.196 an indictment of apartheid like social and economic systems. And 0:17:08.276 --> 0:17:13.436 I don't think I'm over reading. Douglas Adams wrote Hitchhiker's 0:17:13.476 --> 0:17:16.716 Guide on a Hermes manual typewriter. One key is more 0:17:16.796 --> 0:17:20.556 worn down than the rest, the letter X. And you 0:17:20.596 --> 0:17:23.316 know what was on the side of that typewriter, a sticker. 0:17:23.956 --> 0:17:32.076 It says end apartheid. When Elon Musk started college at 0:17:32.116 --> 0:17:36.356 the University of Pretoria, apartheid was on the verge of collapse. 0:17:36.716 --> 0:17:41.996 Today the mighty off South Africa back and why a 0:17:42.116 --> 0:17:44.516 back up nine has. 0:17:44.476 --> 0:17:47.756 No huge hib By then, in nineteen ninety, when Mandela 0:17:47.876 --> 0:17:51.436 was released after twenty seven years in prison, Elon Musk 0:17:51.476 --> 0:17:54.476 had left South Africa behind to launch his new life 0:17:54.796 --> 0:17:58.796 in North America. After studying at the University of Pretoria, 0:17:59.196 --> 0:18:03.076 Elon Musk traveled to Canada, where his maternal grandfather was from. 0:18:03.556 --> 0:18:05.516 He wanted to get to the United States, but it 0:18:05.556 --> 0:18:08.836 was easier to get a Canadian passport. Having broken with 0:18:08.916 --> 0:18:12.036 his he flew to Montreal with nothing but a backpack, 0:18:12.436 --> 0:18:16.396 then hitchhiked to Saskatchewan, where his grandfather had lived before 0:18:16.436 --> 0:18:19.676 moving the family to South Africa. And it's this grandfather, 0:18:19.876 --> 0:18:22.436 jay N. Haldeman, who I want to look at next, 0:18:22.796 --> 0:18:26.036 because before he left Canada in the nineteen thirties, he'd 0:18:26.076 --> 0:18:29.196 been a leader of a strange sci fi inspired movement 0:18:29.476 --> 0:18:34.556 known as technocracy. It bears an uncanny resemblance to some 0:18:34.636 --> 0:18:39.676 things going on today in Silicon Valley, repackaged as existential 0:18:39.796 --> 0:18:40.996 risk futurism. 0:18:41.556 --> 0:18:45.916 What Technocracy Inc. Is chiefly engaged in now is the 0:18:46.036 --> 0:18:50.716 organization of an army of trained men and women who, 0:18:50.836 --> 0:18:55.076 when the present interference controls break down and the intricate 0:18:55.116 --> 0:18:59.316 machinery of production and distribution is in danger of stopping, 0:18:59.836 --> 0:19:03.396 will be able to prevent that catastrophe before it is 0:19:03.516 --> 0:19:04.036 too late. 0:19:04.756 --> 0:19:08.076 So this sounds like science fiction, but this really happened. 0:19:08.516 --> 0:19:12.476 People in the technocracy movement, they called themselves technocrats, wanted 0:19:12.556 --> 0:19:16.396 engineers and scientists to run governments. They took their inspiration 0:19:16.676 --> 0:19:19.796 from science fiction, where engineers and scientists. 0:19:19.396 --> 0:19:20.676 Were always solving problems. 0:19:21.116 --> 0:19:24.436 They were suspicious of democracy and also of capitalism. 0:19:24.796 --> 0:19:29.396 Biprice system is not meant merely the capitalistic system, which 0:19:29.436 --> 0:19:33.116 is only one variety of the species. It means the 0:19:33.196 --> 0:19:38.196 collapse and complete obsolescence of the entire method of distributing 0:19:38.276 --> 0:19:42.996 goods and services by means of a price. There will 0:19:43.036 --> 0:19:48.236 be no place for politics or politicians finance, so financiers 0:19:48.556 --> 0:19:50.356 rackets are racketeers. 0:19:50.996 --> 0:19:54.676 Grant Weitdoff teaches Digital Humanities and American Studies at Princeton. 0:19:55.116 --> 0:19:57.756 He says the technocracy movement started in New York in 0:19:57.836 --> 0:20:01.316 nineteen nineteen with a guy who ran a floor waxing business. 0:20:01.676 --> 0:20:05.116 His idea was that engineers had these unique qualities that 0:20:05.116 --> 0:20:08.116 would somehow make them good social leaders. They could assess 0:20:08.156 --> 0:20:10.836 a situation from a bou they would come up with 0:20:10.956 --> 0:20:15.956 much more rational or economic solutions than politicians or economic 0:20:16.036 --> 0:20:16.996 leaders would. 0:20:17.556 --> 0:20:19.996 Then, with the stock market crash of nineteen twenty nine 0:20:20.036 --> 0:20:23.236 and the depression that followed, democracies were collapsing all over 0:20:23.316 --> 0:20:26.116 the world. Technocracy really had its moment. 0:20:26.436 --> 0:20:29.916 Local chapters at that point had sprung up everywhere across 0:20:29.956 --> 0:20:33.396 the US and Canada, and each of those chapters start 0:20:33.876 --> 0:20:37.676 putting forward their own competing ideas. There's an invented unit 0:20:37.716 --> 0:20:40.316 of measure called the ERG. This is one solution that 0:20:40.356 --> 0:20:44.036 we replace currency with units of energy, depended on how 0:20:44.116 --> 0:20:47.436 much energy a single worker is capable of producing in 0:20:47.436 --> 0:20:49.796 a given day and how much they should get in 0:20:49.836 --> 0:20:51.356 return for that work. 0:20:51.876 --> 0:20:53.756 As far as I can tell, it's at this point 0:20:53.796 --> 0:20:57.916 that Elon Musk's grandfather got involved with technocracy. He lost 0:20:57.916 --> 0:21:01.196 his farm during the depression and ever after didn't believe 0:21:01.236 --> 0:21:04.116 in banks or banking. A lot of people felt that way, 0:21:04.796 --> 0:21:06.636 and some of them were drawn into the set of 0:21:06.676 --> 0:21:09.756 ideas about a different way of thinking of about money. 0:21:10.156 --> 0:21:12.876 And some of the chapters start doing odd things to 0:21:12.956 --> 0:21:15.076 kind of get their message across. They start wearing these 0:21:15.516 --> 0:21:22.156 identical gray uniforms, driving these gray cars in these large parades, 0:21:22.676 --> 0:21:27.156 blasting speeches out of megaphones. They adopt this yin yang 0:21:27.516 --> 0:21:31.116 symbol on all of their uniforms and all of their signs. 0:21:31.676 --> 0:21:33.636 I'm kind of pulled in two different directions, you know. 0:21:33.716 --> 0:21:38.116 On the one hand, I just think they're nuts. On 0:21:38.396 --> 0:21:40.716 the other hand, it seems to reflect an enormous amount 0:21:40.756 --> 0:21:43.796 of anguish and uncertainty, but it has a kind of 0:21:43.876 --> 0:21:46.836 quasi fascistic feel to be how should we read that? 0:21:47.716 --> 0:21:49.756 Technocracy from the start was caught up in a lot 0:21:49.756 --> 0:21:53.196 of different science fictional imaginarys that it didn't always have 0:21:53.396 --> 0:21:58.556 full perspective on. They want to write themselves into these 0:21:58.596 --> 0:22:03.356 gleaming science fictional futures that they are obsessed with, but 0:22:03.676 --> 0:22:06.476 without actually thinking through what that would mean in practice, 0:22:06.916 --> 0:22:10.316 what it would mean to replace an entire system of government. 0:22:13.036 --> 0:22:13.516 Some of what. 0:22:13.516 --> 0:22:17.756 Elon Musk and other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs now endorse, including 0:22:17.796 --> 0:22:21.276 through DOGE the Department of Government Efficiency, bears more than 0:22:21.276 --> 0:22:26.716 a family likeness to the technocracy movement. Libertarianism, deregulation of 0:22:26.756 --> 0:22:31.316 the economy, faith that technological innovations can solve both political 0:22:31.396 --> 0:22:34.996 and social problems, a critique of paper currency and the 0:22:35.036 --> 0:22:40.716 price system. Also, for some reason, technocrats objected to personal names. 0:22:41.076 --> 0:22:45.756 Musk's grandfather renamed himself one zero four five zero dash 0:22:45.996 --> 0:22:51.036 zero one. Another technocrat called himself one x one eight 0:22:51.156 --> 0:22:54.956 zero nine x five six like one of Elon Musk's 0:22:54.996 --> 0:22:58.476 youngest children, a boy named x ash a twelve or 0:22:59.156 --> 0:23:04.436 X for short. Elon Musk after that year in Saskatchewan 0:23:04.596 --> 0:23:08.556 spent two years at Queen's University in Ontario. Then he 0:23:08.636 --> 0:23:12.316 transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, graduating with degrees in 0:23:12.356 --> 0:23:13.956 economics and physics. 0:23:14.276 --> 0:23:15.996 He spent a summer interning. 0:23:15.596 --> 0:23:19.076 At dot COM's in Silicon Valley, where things were getting wild. 0:23:19.356 --> 0:23:25.756 It was a gold rush. In nineteen ninety five, the 0:23:25.836 --> 0:23:29.036 Internet opened to commercial traffic for the first time. You 0:23:29.076 --> 0:23:33.316 could buy stuff online. But how Musk started a PhD 0:23:33.436 --> 0:23:37.196 program in material science engineering at Stanford but dropped out 0:23:37.276 --> 0:23:40.916 after two days. As he later told CNN, back in. 0:23:40.916 --> 0:23:44.076 Ninety five, there weren't very many people on the Internet, 0:23:44.676 --> 0:23:47.276 and certainly nobody was making any money at all. Most 0:23:47.316 --> 0:23:49.396 people thought the Internet was going to be a. 0:23:49.316 --> 0:23:53.436 Fat Elon Musk started his first company, ZIP two, with 0:23:53.516 --> 0:23:56.316 his brother and a friend. Everyone at the time was 0:23:56.316 --> 0:24:00.236 trying to engage in what was called disruptive innovation, which 0:24:00.276 --> 0:24:04.756 means destroy existing industries by doing things completely differently online. 0:24:05.636 --> 0:24:08.796 Zip too, was a newspaper industry disruptive innovation. It helped 0:24:08.796 --> 0:24:12.956 newspapers make the transition to online publishing, though it also 0:24:12.996 --> 0:24:17.036