Innovation is important, but the billionaire's inventions do nothing to help solve today's problems.
By Adam Westbrook Video Producer |
Should we take Elon Musk's ideas seriously? |
Perhaps it's worth asking, because in the last 10 days alone he has had a lot of them. He's offered an unpopular and unsolicited solution to the Ukraine war, pledged to end manual labor with a rather wobbly robot and has vaguely hinted at plans to radically change Twitter should his takeover go through in the coming weeks. |
There's nothing wrong with having ideas or proposing solutions to real problems, but there is a certain arrogance in the way Musk wades into territory outside of his lane. |
Remember his foray into revolutionizing mass transit? Nearly 10 years ago, Musk published a white paper detailing plans for a "Hyperloop" — a miles-long vacuum tube through which small pods would be fired at close to the speed of sound. A six-hour trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco, he promised, would take just 30 minutes. |
This particular idea garnered a lot of attention and companies, including Virgin, began investing in prototypes. But there's a problem: Musk's design is unfeasible. |
That's according to Adam Kovacs, a video producer who has built a large following with his detailed critiques of urban design and mass transit (his takedown of Dubai is particularly enjoyable). The Hyperloop is, he says, a classic example of a "gadgetbahn": futuristic but unnecessarily complicated transportation, whose unique feature also happens to be its fatal flaw. |
I'm struck by how Musk frequently falls victim to what has been coined "elite projection." His ideas for mass transportation are a billionaire's vision: it's all luxury pods and plush leather sofas, a far cry from how actual subways move the masses. |
In advance of his potential Twitter takeover, Opinion Video teamed up with Kovacs to show the flaws in Musk's transport ideas — and offer some obvious solutions — all to question whether the billionaire's takeover of the platform will have real users at heart. |
Maybe you think we're being unfair to Musk. After all, innovation is bumpy and you need to surface a lot of bad ideas to land on a good one. But, as Kovacs insists, "a dozen couches in a vacuum tube is not innovation, it's a luxury theme park ride for people with seven-digit bank accounts." |
We will, I'm sure, continue to entertain everything Musk has to say. But let's remember, his solutions are billionaire solutions, usually far removed from the experiences and needs of people like you and me. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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