Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Those moments that become Musk.

Author | Truman

The latest biography of "Global Top" Musk goes on sale.

This Biography of Elon Musk is the work he has given the greatest authority to follow, and he himself participated in and publicly recommended it.

The author is Walter Isaacson, the author of the million-dollar bestseller, the Biography of Steve Jobs.

Over the past two years, Isaacson has tried to unravel the story behind the business mogul by interviewing more than 200 of Musk's friends, including business rivals, at various meetings, large and small.

How popular is this book?

After opening the reservation, it quickly topped the best-seller list of biographies of business figures in America and Asia. It is said that the initial domestic price was 59 yuan, but it rose to 79 yuan when it was officially put on sale.

After reading the Biography of Elon Musk, can we get to know him?

The story behind the boss, the Biography of Elon Musk, consists of 95 chapters and 608 pages in Chinese translation, covering all aspects of Musk's life from the 1970s to April this year.

Isaacson starts from Musk's childhood in a panoramic narrative, involving his growing up, going to college, getting married and having children, founding SpaceX, Star chain, Boring Company, Neuralink, leading Tesla, and buying Twitter.

There are 6 chapters on Musk's personal life, 20 chapters on Tesla and 19 chapters on SpaceX.

The highlight is Twitter, which Musk bought less than a year ago. Isaacson used 14 chapters to describe the acquisition of Twitter.

We have selected some of them to share with you through published excerpts and the contents of the book.

Next, let's get to know Musk again.

The new model of the new platform will be "Robotaxi".

Tesla's planned new model will be the Robotaxi, with a steering wheel and pedals, not the previously rumored version without steering wheels and pedals. The new car is based on Tess's new platform and costs about $25000.

According to the new biography, Musk and Tesla made a decision in May that the new model will be produced at the Giga super factory in Tesla, rather than at the new plant in Mexico.

The specific reason for the exposure of the concept car model is that in addition to the fact that the new plant in Mexico will not be operational until 2026 or 2027, Walter Isaacson writes that Musk's current home, and Tesla's engineers, are next to a new, highly automated high-speed assembly line near the Texas plant.

Musk insists that this is important because it is more efficient to communicate.

Source: meanwhile, Tesla's chief designer, Franz von Holzhausen, said he was not in favor of immediately producing fully self-driving electric cars without a steering wheel.

The book says:

"We want to make sure that we assess the risk with you," he told Musk. "if we take a path without a steering wheel and FSD is not ready, we will not be able to get them on the road." He suggested that they build a car with a steering wheel and pedals that could be easily disassembled. "generally speaking, our suggestion is to install the steering wheel first and then remove it when allowed."

But Musk's answer is: no.

After a long pause, Musk said again: "No rearview mirror, no pedal, no steering wheel, I am responsible for this decision."

Musk is also famous for playing games.

In April 2022, Musk flew to Vancouver to meet his then girlfriend Grimes and took his son Xuan Amur12 to meet Grimes's parents.

But Grimes said Musk was under a lot of pressure to decide whether to buy Twitter, so he decided to stay at the hotel.

The night Musk stayed at the hotel, Musk played the "Elden Ring" after sending a text message to Twitter's chairman that he wanted to buy Twitter. Grimes said Musk stayed up all night until 05:30

As another example, Musk was very fond of playing a multiplayer strategy game, the Battle of low Model, when he would open the game once he was free.

Grimes also downloaded the game, and once they formed an alliance to attack their opponent, but Grimes attacked Musk with a fireball without warning, which completely infuriated him. "We had such a big fight that we were in the top of all the fights," Grimes recalls.

"apart from playing games, he has no other hobbies or ways to relax. He plays games too seriously."

Colonizing Mars is the ultimate goal? Colonizing Mars has always been Musk's goal.

But not everyone is bullish on Musk, such as Bill Gates. In his biography, Walter Isaacson describes in detail Bill Gates' disappointment with Musk's obsession with colonizing Mars and abandoning Earth.

"I'm not a Mars person."

Gates told Isaacson that Musk had gone too far on Mars.

Like millions of people, the former world's richest man is clearly skeptical about the new world's richest man's plan to colonize Mars, but that doesn't stop Musk from going to Mars.

Musk insists that if mankind wants to have a longer-term future, it must expand to other planets, and Mars is the only choice for the first stop.

His only concern is the speed of development. "can we reach Mars before the collapse of human civilization?"

So Musk has been preparing for the future or "ahead of time".

In 2006, 30 minutes before the Falcon 1 launch, while everyone at the SpaceX was conducting a final inspection, Musk went to the console and had a heated discussion with launch commander Thompson about why he did not buy the aluminum alloy needed for the fuel tank of the future Falcon 5 engine.

At that time, many people did not understand why Musk had to worry about the company's needs for the next six months at such an important moment as the rocket launch.

Source: SpaceX Isaacson writes in his book that it is Musk's typical way of thinking to "put your thoughts into the future" and then move towards your goals under inner driving pressure.

So when the starship was launched in 2023, Musk was still thinking about the future in the face of an intense launch mission.

For example, he wants to build bigger rockets, build bigger factories, open up a new living area for workers, and install solar tiles on the roof.

There is no hotter topic this year about artificial intelligence and childbirth than AI, which swept the world like a hurricane.

This was followed by concerns about artificial intelligence, including Musk.

"in March, Musk texted me and said, 'there are several important things I want to talk to you about,'" Isaacson wrote in Musk's biography. And stressed-- only in person. "

Musk was also worried that their conversation would be bugged and asked Isaacson to leave his phone at home.

"when we sit outside and talk, we should leave our phones at home because someone will use them to monitor our conversation."

Isaacson said Musk expressed his concerns about artificial intelligence, including the conflict between the rapid development of artificial intelligence and the "leveling off" of human intelligence (not getting smarter).

Musk attributed the stabilization of human intelligence to the decline in the human birth rate.

Before the biography was published, Isaacson posted a photo on Twitter, which also turned people's attention to Musk's tidbits.

Source: the Twitter photo exposed Musk with Shivon Zilis, a female executive at his brain-computer interface company, with their twins.

Musk once said, "the collapsing birth rate is by far the greatest danger to human civilization, and I will try my best to solve the crisis of underpopulation."

The whole biography behind the Twitter acquisition contains a lot of content, basically covering Musk's growth, survival and work process from birth to the present, but the author focuses a lot on what has happened in the last 10 years.

There is no doubt that Musk has done great things in the past two years, of course, buying Twitter for $44 billion and then initiating a series of reforms to Twitter.

Mass layoffs, renaming Twitter as X, paid subscriptions, etc., all said that Twitter began to become "smoky" after Musk joined Twitter.

We've actually talked many times about Musk's acquisition of Twitter, but in this biography, it reveals a reason that has never appeared before.

One of Musk's sons applied to the local court last year to renounce him and asked the court to formally recognize her as a woman.

Musk believes that his children have been brainwashed by aristocratic schools in California and "thinks that any rich man is evil." Musk also blamed the aristocratic school in California in his biography, saying that the school had "infected his children with the awakening thinking virus."

And that's one of the reasons Musk bought Twitter.

Musk said in his biography that he wants to eliminate awakening thinking, and that the acquisition of Twitter is part of it. He believes that Twitter should be an open digital square and should not be infected by extreme ism and thinking.

Who wrote this book? As the most famous biographer in America, Walter Isaacson has written biographies of many celebrities, such as Apple founder Steve Jobs, Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein.

And the word of mouth of these biographies is generally good, with a Douban rating of 9.2 in the revised biography of Steve Jobs, published in 2011.

Source: in addition, Walter Isaacson is a professor of history at Tulane University, former editor-in-chief of time magazine and president of the world media giant CNN.

Walter Isaacson's career began when he joined the Sunday Times after graduating from Harvard University and Pembroke College at Oxford University in England.

In 1992, the 40-year-old Isaacson still worked for time magazine and completed his first biography, the Biography of Kissinger. The book sold well, but it was criticized by many people, and it was not until 11 years later that Isaacson released his second biography, the Legend of Franklin, which commemorates the 300th anniversary of Franklin's birth.

Source: in 2007, Isaacson's third biography, Einstein: life and the Universe, was a huge success, making Isaacson a true biographer.

Five years later, Steve Jobs, a biography of Apple founder Steve Jobs, was published, the first authorized biography of Steve Jobs. Isaacson spent nearly five years preparing the book from 2009 to its official publication, talking to Jobs himself, his family, colleagues and competitors, trying to restore the real Steve Jobs.

For nearly a decade after that, Isaacson did not write biographies of other celebrities or entrepreneurs until Musk publicly announced on Twitter in 2021: "Walter Isaacson is writing my biography."

Source: UCSB Arts & Lectures now that the book is finally published, according to the introduction to the Biography of Musk on Amazon, Walter Isaacson has been involved in Musk's work and life for nearly three years, including, but not limited to, meetings with Musk, visits to Tesla's factory, and communication with Musk's family, ex-wife, colleagues and subordinates.

"he was driven by the devil." Isaacson said in an interview with the media that Musk has many personality defects, fickle, irritable, aggressive, "sometimes humorous, sometimes just an asshole."

03. Why did Walter Isaacson, the most interesting man on the planet, write a biography of Musk?

Isaacson revealed in an interview that the reason for writing this book is, on the one hand, because his father is an electrical engineer, which gives him some knowledge and research on electrification, and usually likes to drive electric cars, on the other hand, he also yearns for space travel.

Judging from the keywords electric cars and space travel, there seems to be no one in the world who knows better than Musk in both fields.

In fact, although both the Biography of Jobs and Musk were written by Isaacson, unlike Jobs who took the initiative to find Isaacson and asked him to write a biography of himself, Musk was introduced and accepted Isaacson's request for his biography.

Isaacson was not stingy with his evaluation of Musk, who he thought was "the most interesting person on the planet".

Because he is doing two of the most interesting things of his time, electric cars and rockets.

Turning exaggeration into reality is one of Musk's superpowers, so Isaacson contacted Musk through friends before Musk bought Twitter, hence the public biography of Musk.

It is reported that before the official publication of the biography, Musk did not review the manuscript, nor read the manuscript, let alone control the content of the manuscript.

I haven't read Musk's biography from the beginning, but to some extent, we have heard too much about Musk, the world's richest man with multiple identities.

From the business he founded to his unruly style, from Twitter's top Internet surfer to his tidbits, every move seems to attract a lot of attention from the global media.

At the trial reading of the Biography of Musk, Tao Lin, vice president of Tesla, talked about Musk as a leader in her impression. She believes that the most obvious feature of Musk is not his love of adventure. One of the best logic to explain Musk's many actions is that Musk feels that he is running out of time.

"an important feature of Musk's ability to do what he is today is to simplify complex things." Tao Lin, vice president of Tesla, said.

Finally, back to our initial question, what kind of person is Musk?

Genius, madman, the richest man in the world, Iron Man in Silicon Valley, the most interesting man of his time.

He has too many labels on him. Can a biography of Musk answer this question?

The answer is obviously no.

A biography can not summarize a person's life, not to mention that this vivid character is still making history.

In the foreseeable future, we witness together.

Reference link:

Https://www.electrive.com/2023/09/11/musk-biography-reveals-plans-for-compact-model-and-robot-taxi-on-the-same-platform/

Https://futurism.com/the-byte/bill-gates-elon-musk-reasoning-mars-electric-cars-flawed

Https://www.businessinsider.com/some-tesla-engineers-hated-cybertruck-design-elon-musk-biography-2023-9

Https://new.qq.com/rain/a/20230909A049NG00/

Https://new.qq.com/rain/a/20230911A0452C00

This article is from the official account of Wechat: Super Electric Lab (ID:SuperEV-Lab). Author: Truman.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.