One of the least controversial statements it would be possible to make in this world is that Elon Musk is a bit of a nightmare as a human being.
In Britain, we have seen him address a rally in support of the so-called Tommy Robinson and pay his legal fees. He has poked his oar (selectively) into grooming gangs. In the US, we have seen him call for troops to be deployed against the drug-addicted tramps on the streets of San Francisco. This is demented. And across the world, we have seen the effects of his close association with Donald Trump, his giving apparent Nazi salutes, and transforming Twitter into a cesspit with a silly name.
But here is a controversial proposition: does it matter that he is appalling? And does he have acceptable reasons for being an abomination? To both points, I have an even more contentious position. In the highly unlikely event that I ever get to know him or even meet him, I think I would quite like Elon Musk. And I admire a huge amount of his life’s work so far.
As for his achievements, while the Twitter-to-X transition has been a horror story, the rest of Musk’s oeuvre has been far from peripheral rubbish.
His creations are among the most important and beneficial technological advances of the past 50 years – making electric vehicles mainstream, revolutionising satellite launch costs by means of reusable rockets, bringing internet access to remote regions, and working on Neuralink, which could restore function to people with paralysis or spinal injuries.
His company SpaceX launched the 10,000th Starlink into orbit after successfully delivering another batch of 56 satellites on Sunday, making Musk not only the richest man on Earth but also the most powerful person in space.
I am not sure many innovators could have had the imagination to propose, let alone build, those extraordinary, almost balletic rockets that land upright. It’s breathtaking stuff, and, twit that he is on an emotional and personal level, this is beyond admirable.
‘While the Twitter-to-X transition has been a horror story, the rest of Musk’s oeuvre has been far from peripheral rubbish’ (Getty Images)
OK, now as for liking him, I accept I am out on a limb, and that many people who have dealings with him do not love him. Yet he has two things that I find appealing. One is that he’s a tech iconoclast. For decades, techies have dreamed of flying cars. Companies are still spending billions on developing them. But Musk is one of the very few who think they are a ludicrously bad idea. He is also very funny about them. Look for YouTube clips of him talking on the subject.
The other thing I like is the way he speaks. When he’s not being ridiculous next to Trump or “Robinson”, he has a hesitant, rather modest way of speaking that is the opposite of a braggart’s. I have always thought you can tell a lot just from a person’s manner of delivery, and in Musk’s case, when he’s not high on whatever, it’s quite likeable.
I would say he is also excused for the odd character flaw thanks to his background of hideous abuse. Musk was horribly bullied at school, treated even worse by his bizarre father (who had a child by his own stepdaughter – nice, eh?), and brought up horrified by the apartheid regime into which he was born. No wonder the young Elon lost himself in science fiction and fantasy.
The truth is, inventors and innovators are, almost to a person, flawed, unhinged and to some extent unpleasant people. From Newton to Edison, Gates to Jobs, Tesla, Watt, Marconi, Ford, Baird and Bell, there is not one you would want to spend social time with. All have been egomaniacs to some extent. All have needed to be beyond driven to hammer their vision into acceptance – although, admittedly, not all of them have been billionaires with their own social media platform to blast their thoughts into the ear of the world, nor had the ear of the president of the USA.
Put another way, the list of great innovators who have been nice people is pitifully short. Tim Berners Lee; Douglas Engelbart (inventor of the mouse and the hypertext link) Linus Torvalds (inventor of the Linux operating system); Hedy Lamarr, the 1930s Hollywood star who – in one of science’s oddest facts – worked, unpaid, on what would become WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS. And that’s about it.