It was Stephen R. Covey who said, “When you have too many top priorities, you effectively have no top priorities.” Is that where we are today with Elon Musk as he buys Twitter and puts his fortune and name on the line?
I thought he was the man with ideas for transforming our auto industry while also building the first Martian colony. Now I am not so sure. Maybe that is what too much money will do to a person – cause them to think that they have a solution for everything rather than simply some good, focused ideas.
Will Mr. Musk have enough attention and energy to oversee SpaceX, Tesla, and Twitter? Will he combine them into one big company? Will he sell off something to fund his other adventures?
Clearly his priorities have expanded from building better rockets and cars, though these improved rockets and cars really what this country needs more than one more person playing with Twitter. We don’t need Mr. Musk to save democracy from itself, which is what he seems to think he is doing. No, we need to build new and better things to get us into a better future. Let someone else worry about a company of 280 characters.
Twitter could disappear tomorrow and life will be just fine. And maybe Tesla could disappear tomorrow now that everyone else got the point about electric vehicles. But the space program? We need ever more innovative ideas to get us to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere. That is where Mr. Musk helped us to dream and see a new future. No one dreams about improved edit capabilities at Twitter, except maybe Mr. Musk.
It is time to focus on the prize and not the prattle. Mr. Musk will not be remembered for “saving” Twitter from itself. He will be remembered if he can get us to Mars. It is time to grow up, ignore the noisy crowd, and start building rockets again. Let’s keep the dream alive.
Our Awesome Universe 