TIME Names Elon Musk 2021’s Person Of The Year
Image via Phil Stafford / Shutterstock.com
TIME magazine has named Elon Musk, current richest person in the world, and founder of SpaceX, Tesla, and the Boring Company, as its 2021 Person of the Year.
This prestigious title, in recent years also awarded to climate activist Greta Thunberg and former US President Donald Trump, is given to “the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year, for better or for worse,” as written by TIME’s former Managing Editor Walter Isaacson in the magazine’s 1998 issue.
Readers are invited to weigh in on who they think deserves the title, but the ultimate decision is made by the magazine’s editors. Before the internet existed, it was a mail poll; now, of course, everything is done online.
As exemplified by the 1938 title going toward Adolf Hitler, it’s clear to see that it doesn’t mean that the person necessarily has to be regarded as a hero to be named Person of the Year.
But back to 2021. With a net worth of upwards of US$250 billion, Musk has broken countless frontiers with his developments in technology, space and electric vehicle-related, among others.
Although at times controversial (hello, Full Self-Driving), his creations have certainly taken life—and space exploration—to new heights.
As if he didn’t already have all this going for him, Musk also has an undeniable influence on the cryptocurrency market. A single tweet can send a token soaring or crashing, with his widespread reach once helping an NFT artist to make their breakthrough sale on, of all things, a meme.
Bloomberg columnist Matt Levine once wrote: “The way finance works now is that things are valuable not based on their cash flows but on their proximity to Elon Musk.”
“He was raised in a tough environment and born with a very special brain,” Antonio Gracias, Musk’s close friend of two decades, describes to TIME. Musk has recognized this on his appearance on Saturday Night Live, where he described himself as “the “first person with Asperger's to host SNL. Or at least the first to admit it.”
Although controversial and, at times, seemingly “all talk,” his countless innovations from Tesla vehicles to reusable SpaceX rockets, when delivered, have the potential to change the world with everything from combatting global warming to taking humanity into space.
As TIME concisely puts it, “The man from the future where technology makes all things possible is a throwback to our glorious industrial past, before America stagnated and stopped producing anything but rules, restrictions, limits, obstacles and Facebook.”
Elon Musk (@elonmusk) is TIME's 2021 Person of the Year #TIMEPOY https://t.co/8Y5BhIldNs pic.twitter.com/B6h6rndjIh
— TIME (@TIME) December 13, 2021
[via NPR, cover image via Phil Stafford / Shutterstock.com]
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