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Time Person of the Year: Elon Musk (cnn.com) 248

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Time magazine has named CEO of Tesla and SpaceX Elon Musk as Person of the Year. From a report: "Person of the Year is a marker of influence, and few individuals have had more influence than Musk on life on Earth, and potentially life off Earth too," Time editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal wrote. "In 2021, Musk emerged not just as the world's richest person but also as perhaps the richest example of a massive shift in our society." It was indeed a banner year for Musk, who garnered attention for becoming the richest person in the world in part due to the rise in Tesla's stock price. With SpaceX, Musk launched the first-ever mission to Earth's orbit with a crew of only tourists and no professional astronauts.
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Time Person of the Year: Elon Musk More

Time Person of the Year: Elon Musk

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  • Certainly Influential. (Score:5, Informative)

    by splutty ( 43475 ) on Monday December 13, 2021 @01:06PM (#62076001)

    Whether you like him or not, or agree or disagree with what he does with his companies, he's certainly been influential in the last decade.

    A lot of people don't even remember that he became rich because he started PayPal.

    • Re:Certainly Influential. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by apoc.famine ( 621563 ) <apoc.famine@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Monday December 13, 2021 @02:21PM (#62076413) Journal

      I'm just blown away that we've got one of the biggest attacks on the internet that we've seen in years going on and this is what the /. "editors" run with. I mean, there's a fairly important story going on right now that in the old days would be top article for a week.

      • You sure? I just checked google news and there were no internet stories.

        And also, well, here we are, using the internet...

    • "Person of the year" is also not a mark of excellence or an honor. Even Hitler got person of the year. But somehow people seem to think that person of the year is a big honor and are upset if someone they dislike gets it, or someone they do like fails to get it, and in some cases Twitter storms because they think they were snubbed.

      • TIME lost thousands of subscribers when they named Hitler MOTY.

        Since then, TIME has avoided "honoring" people disliked by Americans.

        The most influential person in 2001 was obviously Osama bin Laden, but TIME gave it to Rudy Guliani.

    • Re:Certainly Influential. (Score:5, Informative)

      by UnknownSoldier ( 67820 ) on Monday December 13, 2021 @04:16PM (#62076935)

      > A lot of people don't even remember that he became rich because he started PayPal.

      False. Here is the timeline of events:

      Dec. 1998 Confinity was started by Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, and Luke Nosek. Peter Theil becomes CEO.
      Jan. 1999 Musk starts X.com
      July 1999 Confinity announces PayPal
      Sept. 1999 Confinity ships PayPal. Offers $10 deposit for new users. X.Com copies the idea of gifting $20 to new users.
      Mar. 2000 Confinity and X.com merge. New company's name is X.com. Peter Theil becomes CFO. Peter Thiel quits the company.
      April 2000 Peter Thiel returns as Chairman as Musk called for an emergency board meeting to replace Harris. Musk was named as the new CEO. Musk wanted to phase out PayPal but X.com makes customers think of porn industry
      Summer 2000 X.com is highly vulnerable to fraud. Customer base explodes but the website is crashing weekly.
      Sept. 2000 Musk is removed as CEO from X.com. Peter Thiel returns as CEO.
      Mar. 2001 Musk is terminated from X.com
      June 2001 X.com changes their company name to PayPal
      Oct. 2002 eBay buys PayPal for $1.5 Billion
      July 2017 Musk buys domain name X.com back from PayPal

    • He started with paypal, but he turned that first 100 million into a constellation of very interesting, high impact companies. He’s eclectic and a salesman, for sure, but its clear he turned his first fortune into something good. Contrast that to Thiel, who used his paypal cashout to found “the unblinking eye of sauron”, cough I meant to say “Palantir”, and then followed it up by abandoning his country cause his religious doctrine believes that paying taxes to keep the roads pa

      • He started with paypal

        No he didn't, he started with Zip2. Compaq later bought Zip2 and it was Musk's share of the price received that enabled him to start x.com, a sort of precursor of PayPal. Musk never even worked for PayPal, he was kicked out by Peter Theil before then.

    • A lot of people don't even remember that he became rich because he started PayPal.

      You don't even remember that he did not start PayPal

    • A lot of people don't even remember that he became rich because he started PayPal.

      He "became rich" from his parents who used borderline enslavement in the diamond trade.

      But keep rubbing the poster of Elon you pass out to every night.

  • Bezos To Sue! (Score:5, Funny)

    by BeerFartMoron ( 624900 ) on Monday December 13, 2021 @01:08PM (#62076005)
    Jeff Bezos is going to be so pissed off. He will sue Time and drop them from Kindle. Time will settle and give Bezos half the prize.

  • He's at the crossroads of the most important tech (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Monday December 13, 2021 @01:09PM (#62076009)

    Elon Musk is the leader of many aspects of technology that will be really important going forward:

    Access to space.
    Large scale electrical storage.
    Electrification of vehicles and charging thereof.
    AI in relation to navigation of automated vehicles.

    He absolutely deserves to me man of the year, probably more than any have been for a decade or more.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by RobinH ( 124750 )
      I don't think self-driving vehicles are as close as many people think, but you're forgetting Neuralink.
    • In the case of space he didn't even put up the money for it. It was all government contracts. I guess he did use his connections gained from having a ton of money to get those government contracts, so there is that.

      I do not understand why we act like this guy is freaking Tony Stark. He came from a well-to-do family, got lucky in the .com boom with a buyout from PayPal, and then bought an electric car company around the time the government started heavily subsidizing electric cars. The guy's been a welfa

      • All of which he had everything to do with (Score:5, Insightful)

        by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Monday December 13, 2021 @03:50PM (#62076853)

        In the case of space he didn't even put up the money for it. It was all government contracts.

        Not sure why you think that but Musk put $100 million of his own money into SpaceX [wikipedia.org] to start it.

        I do not understand why we act like this guy is freaking Tony Stark.

        Maybe because the rest of us are not operating under false narratives about how and what Musk built? Just sayin'.

        Also the reason who gets a lot of respect from very technical people is extremely simple - he ships working stuff. Working electric cars. Working spacecraft. Working battery systems. Are they perfect? No, but almost all of us on Slashdot are technical enough to reply respect someone who can ship a hardware product outside the mainstream repeatedly across multiple industries that is actually pretty reliable, along with continued iteration and improvement.

        Thus the real reason for respect is that somehow he manages to build companies without weighty management or risk-analysis folk toppling progress before it gains momentum.

        I don't think people have a problem with critique of Musk, as long as it's not fabricated.

  • I don't like Musk but I admire him. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Monday December 13, 2021 @01:11PM (#62076017)

    I do wish Tesla and SpaceX had a press team, so information on Musks companies can be spread without having to follow Musk on twitter, where you need to filter out all his rants and feelings of the day.

    However Musk seemed to be the only person who had been able to push massive change, in terms of Electric Cars where 20 years ago, were considered a joke of a failed technology, to a serious technology that world countries are seriously considering, and other companies are trying to change over to Electric. Also Space X, where the idea of a Private Space Company seemed ludicrous, where we now have some of the most advanced rockets.

    While I don't agree with all of his politics, his latest musings of the day are tiresome, I do have to give him credit for able to push a vision of the future in which the rest of society said it couldn't be done, and have success in doing it.
     

    • I do wish Tesla and SpaceX had a press team, so information on Musks companies can be spread without having to follow Musk on twitter

      Musk's ego doesn't allow for that.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mspohr ( 589790 )

        He doesn't believe in advertising or PR since he believes it's essentially lying.
        What you get is raw unfiltered Musk on Twitter.

        • Well public relations and a press team isn't advertising, But people have a lot of questions for Tesla, more than what Musk can respond to.

          They are Car accidents in which people Claim that they were using Auto-pilot but shown not to be using it.
          Car fires where people claim it just started on its own, while the records show the car getting into an accident.
          What is the status of the new Battery Chemistry when will it be available?
          What features are going to be on the Cybertruck, when will it be released now?
          Ar

        • He doesn't believe in advertising or PR since he believes it's essentially lying.

          So he prefers to do his lying first-hand rather than via a paid subordinate.

    • Unfortunately, the current state of human communications means that Musk’s antics are beneficial. A press team is for old, massive, bloated companies that are coasting in for a landing at the “we pay out regular dividends” airport.

  • Well done! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Joce640k ( 829181 )

    This is thoroughly deserved considering what he's achieved and all the crap he's taken from the h8ters.

    • To be fair, Musk did set himself up to get a lot of Crap and Hate. While some of it was just because a lot of people just hate things being different and Musk needed to shake the status quo. There are other things he says and does that are just seemingly out there and he doesn't seem to realize that a lot of people who like and dislike him take things seriously.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by blahabl ( 7651114 )

        To be fair, Musk did set himself up to get a lot of Crap and Hate. While some of it was just because a lot of people just hate things being different and Musk needed to shake the status quo. There are other things he says and does that are just seemingly out there and he doesn't seem to realize that a lot of people who like and dislike him take things seriously.

        Actually I think most of the hate he's getting is from leftists, mad that he burst their bubble, and spectacularly so. They were very fond of saying "yes, well, wake me up when private enterprise can put man in orbit", and here we are darling, rise and shine, not only is private enterprise the only way US has manned space access, but he also completely embarassed governments by proving that the crowning achievement of big govt could be done orders of magnitude cheaper.

        • Re:Well done! (Score:5, Insightful)

          by alfredo ( 18243 ) on Monday December 13, 2021 @03:40PM (#62076805)
          I never heard any leftist say to wake them up when private enterprise puts a man in orbit. They knew NASA and their cutting edge technology could and would be used by the private sector. I heard no complaints. Remember the left is pro science.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by inhuman_4 ( 1294516 )

          Actually I think most of the hate he's getting is from leftists, mad that he burst their bubble, and spectacularly so.

          I think it's more the fact that the richest man in America started out as a middle class immigrant from Africa. One of the far-left's favorite mantras is "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer". Someone immigrating to American and climbing to the top pokes a big hole in that worldview.

        • Let's not act like Musk did this all on his own. His companies have gotten billions in subsidies from the US Govt alone, which doesn't take away from the awesome accomplishments but does knock down the "private industry alone" angle.

          Tesla Motors Inc., SolarCity Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX, together have benefited from an estimated $4.9 billion in government support, according to data compiled by The Times. https://www.latimes.com/busine... [latimes.com]

          • How much does the US spend each year on ensuring that the world has a reliable source of fossil fuels? The few billions Tesla has received is a drop in the ocean.

        • The left turned against Musk when he chose to be on Trump's side. Before that, they liked what his cars were doing for the environment.

      • Re:Well done! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Areyoukiddingme ( 1289470 ) on Monday December 13, 2021 @02:46PM (#62076545)

        There are other things he says and does that are just seemingly out there and he doesn't seem to realize that a lot of people who like and dislike him take things seriously.

        Hollywood conditioning at work. Most people will never meet a billionaire, so their expectations are set by movies more than anything else. A weirdly large number of people think that a billionaire is required to act like either Daddy Warbucks or like a cartoon villain, with nothing in between. A billionaire acting like a bit of a dorky jerk online violates a whole lot of people's expectations, and people hate it when their expectations are violated.

        Which is also why people hate him for his inability to estimate times. Elon Musk is trying to change the world (which also garners him an unfair share of hate), and the things he's trying to change tend to be deemed impossible to accomplish using conventional management techniques. One of his unconventional management techniques (attracting yet more hate) is setting an outrageously optimistic timeline, then shivvying people into trying to meet it. They never do, and an analysis of the projects his teams have successfully brought to completion (of which there are many, haters to the contrary) shows that you have to multiply his estimates by a factor of 2.6 to get the real time it will take. That error factor is a target of hate all by itself, because it violates expectations.

        Elon Musk's unconventional management style has resulted in many conversations along the lines of:

        Elon: "We're going to accomplish six impossible things before breakfast!"
        Hapless Engineer: "Five of those things require unobtanium."
        Elon: "We're going to accomplish one impossible thing before breakfast!"
        Hapless Engineer: "We can't possibly accomplish that impossible thing. It's impossible."
        Elon: "I've done some calculations and the physics says it's possible, somehow."
        Hapless Engineer: "Your physics model is a spherical cow in a vacuum."
        Elon: "It is not! It's a spherical cow at very high altitude. We can do this."
        Hapless Engineer: "All right, all right, if we revise it like so, and compromise here, maybe we can do it."
        Elon: "Before breakfast!"
        Hapless Engineer: "Uhhh, sure."

        Two and a half breakfasts later, it's accomplished. After at least that many major revisions. But the damn thing works. Which fuels the mindless rage even more, because the impossible thing turned out to be possible and yet another expectation was violated.

        Elon Musk exists at a time when there are a distinct lack of heroes, when even the concept of heroism has fallen out of favor even worse than it did in the '60s and '70s, when even the fictional hero has fallen out of favor after The Decade of Marvel, while we're reaping yet another crop of post-modernist horseshit. He's become something of a cultural fulcrum, all unwittingly. A great many people have loaded him down with their irrational hopes and their irrational hates and in the age of social media, it will be a minor miracle if he escapes sane. It's going to take a rather long stretch of time before the accomplishments and character of Time Magazine's Person of the Year 2021 are reasonably understood by the masses.

  • obligatory (Score:3, Interesting)

    by eaglesrule ( 4607947 ) <eaglesrule@nospam.pm.me> on Monday December 13, 2021 @01:20PM (#62076067)

    How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket Booster [youtube.com]

    How You Should Land and Orbital Rocket Booster [youtube.com]

    Time is a political rag magazine. But it is nice to see someone who manages to orchestrate such an engineering feat get the recognition they deserve.

  • RTFA (Score:3)

    by mspohr ( 589790 ) on Monday December 13, 2021 @01:31PM (#62076131)

    To all of those posting random misinformation here, please just RTFA first. I know it's kind of long and might stress your attention span but it does provide a balanced, detailed history of Musk's life and companies.

  • Congratulations (Score:5, Funny)

    by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Monday December 13, 2021 @01:37PM (#62076147) Homepage

    Congratulations to our country's most successful african-american!

  • Ok, there are still a bit more than 75 years to go so... But Elon is an anomaly. He was not expected. We have plenty of the Bezos type and they were easy to predict. But Elon's drive is not about money like the Bezo's type. You could argue about his motive, But who could take so much risk and put so much effort and drive to make our specie multi-planetery ? There is simply nobody who cares about such things and actually puts it into action. I don't think we'll see many like Elon. Not sure why he came to be,
  • There are reasons I don't read Time and this is one of them

  • he doesn't have a big enough ego already...

  • For working hardest to prevent US space travel

  • ... not Time Magazine, but Elon Musk as being incredibly successfully important.

    Whichever way you look at the man, what he has achieved in his life so far, is somewhat incredible - quite where it leads from here, considering he is only 50, is anyones guess.

    He has a sci-fi name - a 1950's sci-fi name and is clearly obsessed with science fiction and making it science reality.

    Move over big government tech, the frontier for scientific advancement has shifted. It's in private hands now and has been for some time

  • Useless pandering garbage "news"

  • Well deserved, influential is an understatement (Score:3)

    by nathanh ( 1214 ) on Monday December 13, 2021 @05:09PM (#62077125) Homepage
    To change the direction of even a single industry would be a great achievement for any individual. But to change the direction of multiple industries? Thatâ(TM)s so rare as to defy belief. If this was written into a book you would think it was fiction. And of course he didnâ(TM)t personally invent the EV or space travel or internet commerce. That criticism is so misguided. The history of Tesla is well-known; Musk invested in an existing EV company and then ousted the founders. But what this criticism misses is that Musk saw the potential to change the world whereas the founders only saw an expensive toy for the rich. And not only did Musk have a vision to change the world he also managed to convince 1000s of engineers, designers, mechanics, to get behind his vision and implement it. Elon also sold the idea to the public and arguably thatâ(TM)s an even more impressive achievement. That is the rare quality that Elon Musk has which makes him so influential; the ability to lead. Itâ(TM)s so rare a quality that I can think of only a handful of people like him; Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Steve Jobs. These people also strode into existing industries, kicked over the tables, declared the status quo to be bunk and showed them the future. Watching the reaction of the car industry go from denial to acceptance has been so goddamn sweet. Especially on slashdot where most of the denizens are programmers or engineers, its easy to forget that your work means nothing if nobody uses it. The ability to see a vision for the future, bring several disciplines together to achieve that vision, give them direction and funding, and keep pushing until the vision is realised, too many people underestimate how difficult that is, how insanely rare that is, and how important it is to recognise and celebrate the few individuals who are capable of doing it.

  • But Musk just said he might ditch his companies (Score:3)

    by nukenerd ( 172703 ) on Monday December 13, 2021 @06:53PM (#62077433)
    Has everyone missed the news that he said SpaceX is on the verge of bankruptcy, and that he might jump out?

    Here [gizmodo.com] and Here [metro.co.uk]

  • Thank God that asshole Bezos didn't win (Score:3)

    by ayesnymous ( 3665205 ) on Monday December 13, 2021 @11:19PM (#62078017)
    If they're gonna pick some billionaire who who's taking civilians to space, then it was down to Musk, Bezos, and Branson. Thankfully they didn't pick the asshole Bezos, who for over a day was celebrating a space launch and didn't even realize his employees died from a tornado.

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