Asimov and Musk being jointly credited with Asimov's ideas. Now we have proof the Musk is the king of marketers...and that our country is doomed.

+1

I know several SpaceX folks, both jumped ship when they separated reality from hype. Both were in prominent positions and commented that the company was a LONG way from manned launches.

I'd be more worried about corporate parasites that live off of taxpayer's money.


BYW, i'm very worried that some day mankind will learn how to harness the atom, to use it as a nuclear "weapon" reining down destruction on hundreds of thousands of people in Japan.

Does that make me some sort of visionary?

Comparing Musk to Azimov is a terrible injustice to a genius and Azimov fans have good reason to be upset.
Now if you compared him to Heinlein, that'd be fightin' words mister!

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1414428207.jpg

This ^^
Cheers
JB

Musk is an innovator. He's pushing the auto industry to innovate quickly. He's challenging existing models of car sales, marketing and distribution. He's also created some pretty cool products.

Regarding the merits of summoning the demon, we are giving up our control over our car and essentially control over our body to a car when we get into a driverless vehicle. We'll need to depend on the decisions of that driverless vehicle to react appropriately to unplanned and sudden changes to the road conditions. What if it malfunctions and runs over the neighbor's kid? Is the car company or the car's owner liable?

Musk has a vision for our future. He thinks with teraforming, huge advances in science and technology, mankind some day may have a chance with a future at Mars. It's worth pondering. Anyone with better ideas? Is mass extinction or the apocalypse a better idea?

Combine this

Harvard cracks DNA storage, crams 700 terabytes of data into a single gram | ExtremeTech

With this

Biological computer can decrypt images stored in DNA | ExtremeTech

Add a little AI and we are royally screwed.

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LOL do I have a better idea than trying to colonize Mars? Yeah, but only about a hundred thousand of them.
But hey, if that sort of make-believe stuff makes you FEEL good .........

@sammy, Let's hear the best out of your 100k ideas and how you'd make them a reality. Musk has the reputation of doing interesting stuff. Putting your ideas on the same level as his accomplishments hopefully makes YOU feel better.

It is already an issue. If a self driving car gets in a situation where it has two options, kill a pedestrian in the street or drive you off a cliff, what should it do? These things are being debated so they can be programmed.

Google is buying up tons of AI companies and pushing the research. The billionaires are interested in electronically living forever. More time is (currently) the one thing all their money can't buy.

Musk = PT Barnum

Hey, go easy. Steve Jobs is dead; the masses need another scheisster (spelling intentional) to tell them what's cool. Let them have their hero.

elon musk is no savior, no hero. he's just a guy who invents stuff, makes stuff, sells stuff like us. you may think he's pt barnum, but tesla does make a sedan that goes from 0-60 in 3.2 seconds. elon musk cofounded paypal, is the CEO of tesla, CEO and CTO of space x, CEO of solarcity.

musk has a lot of ideas, some far fetched, some just crazy. but it's the crazy people that often make a difference in the world. i don't care about musk's politics. i care about the future of cars, about ways to make them better. musk is trying very hard to change transportation, to make it better.

musk may fail and ultimately make some very big mistakes. but i don't fault him for trying.

***

regarding steve jobs, he's a hero to all who didn't have a choice when it came to computers. mac or apple gave most of us a choice. i like people who start companies, fail, then somehow pick themselves up to start again. steve jobs was also the ceo of next and pixar, which gave us wonderful stories that changed the world. without steve job's money, pixar would have gone out of business. steve jobs was instrumental for the creation of toy story. the success of toy story led to films like finding memo, up, monsters inc, and the incredibles.

steve jobs may not be a hero to you, but he is a hero to my 90 year old dad, who couldn't work a cell phone until he got an iPhone. now my dad texts, manages his credit card online, browses the internet, and even buys things on amazon.com. my dad now uses an iPad. my mom is addicted to candy crush. the company steve jobs left behind made products that were so easy to use that even technophobes like my parents can use them. that's something pt barnum never did.

Yep. The robot series. Great stuff.