Elon Musk is a huge inspiration for me. He has been involved in creating 4 businesses worth over $50 billion. The character of Iron Man is reputedly based on him. He is now launching a project with the aim of commercialising space travel with the bigger goal of supporting life on other planets. What a dude!
Am not sure to what degree he has always claimed it, but now he is all about big picture stuff. He says he doesn’t aim to make a business; he sets out to solve problems. Big problems. From making a reliable way to send money over the internet, to reducing the use of fossil fuels in cars, to making a mass transport that is safe and as fast as Concorde, to exporting human consciousness to other planets- all lofty goals.
As I blogged about here, most people don’t see past the end of their own nose (although I question whether it is a physical rather than selfish issue). The only problems they see are their own. And I have constantly said that that will not lead anywhere for their happiness (unless technology chips in). We need a better awareness of the context for our lives. Today, even the average middle class citizen is living a princely life in terms of health, life expectancy, food options available, security, comfort, technology and freedoms to travel compared to any time known in history. Some people might claim there have been other times- some ancient Chinese societies perhaps- where the average person had a better standard of living, but I think health care, cheap flights and technology swing it for me.
I hope with my commitment to making the history of the world more accessible: the periods of wealth and decline of nations, the natural disasters that are common place, the corruption of powerful leaders, the circumstances that nurture remarkable individuals, the behaviours and decisions made by groups of people under certain pressures, and the whole myriad of complex situations that have spawned from the first human civilisations up to todays world, will help to provide the tools people need to see a bigger picture and understand how they fit into the world.
I dream and work hard everyday to make this a way of me being able to lead an independent life where I am free to work on further projects that can help the world. I am in no short supply of ideas of my next move. But I have much work left to do on TimeMaps first.
I would love to know at what stage Elon Musk let space exploration drive his short term goals and to what extent it helped him in his decisions. And I’d love to hear about the overarching big picture ideas that have sculpted the decisions us “normal” people choose for their own life.
Please send me yours?
}ijib 