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This fall, Hollywood’s favorite villains are tech CEOs trying to build the future.
Out now, “The Social Reckoning,” portrays Mark Zuckerberg as a man destabilizing the world; Alex Gibney’s nearly four-hour documentary “Musk,” has been described as a “hit piece”; and Nathan Fielder’s “You Can See Everything” spotlights a deranged Elizabeth Holmes. A new CBS show, “Cupertino,” follows the lawyers taking on the Silicon Valley elite. Next month, Netflix’s The Altruists focuses on Sam Bankman-Fried defrauding FTX customers, while December’s “Artificial,” paints Sam Altman as a manipulative sociopath.
While, some of the criticism is fair, some billionaire founders deserve to be celebrated as heroes for creating a brighter future.
On Thursday night at a SpaceX facility in Texas, Elon Musk offered some spectacular counter-programming with the introduction of the long-delayed Roadster — a flying, thruster-equipped car.
Before the demonstration began, Musk admitted he wasn’t sure it would work, saying “success is not guaranteed.”
Then, the Tesla Roadster drove up a curved ramp until it was hanging upside down, held in place by underbody suction fans. From there, it launched off the ramp, flipped in the air with the help of SpaceX cold-gas thrusters, and used those same thrusters to lower itself gently to the ground. Later, it accelerated from 0 to 60 mph in under a second and leaped over a lineup of Teslas, including a Cybertruck and a Semi.
“Turns out the future does have flying cars,” Musk posted on X afterward. On stage he described the Roadster as a collaboration between “the world’s best car company and the world’s best rocket company.” He was smart to do it in front of a live audience. In this day and age, anything too badass is assumed to be fake. Musk said as much on stage, “We need an audience to prove that it’s not AI.”
A single clip Musk posted of Thursday’s event on X has racked up 47 million views as of Friday afternoon.
On stage, Musk also referenced the old complaint from notable investors Peter Thiel who said, “The future promised us flying cars, but instead we got 140 characters.” Actually, if last night is any indication, it turns out we can have both.
In a world filled with so much fear about the future, it was refreshing to be reminded that founders who sometimes get things wrong can also get things very right.
What if the future isn’t just something to be scared of? What if some of it is genuinely fantastic — filled with flying cars, technology that helps the paralyzed walk and AI research that cures cancer.
The same boundless energy, audacity and vision that can produce failure can also produce something genuinely awe-inspiring. And it’s founders’ recklessness and audacity that built America. It wasn’t a bunch of bureaucrats of middle managers, it was people crazy and ambitious enough to try — the Thomas Edisons, the Wright Brothers, the Henry Fords.
Yes, fraudsters like Elizabeth Holmes and Sam Bankman-Fried deserve to be exposed and held accountable. And leaders like Sam Altman deserve tough questions about the technology they’re putting into the world. But as much as the media calls out what goes wrong, we should also recognize when things go right. Scrutinizing founders and celebrating innovation aren’t mutually exclusive.
There is something worth defending about the founder willing to pursue an idea that everyone else thinks is ridiculous, and persuade engineers, investors and employees to help make it real.
We should want a culture that produces inventors, engineers and founders, not just people ridicule them for trying
The future needs people who want to build it.