Elon Musk it the founder of SpaceX, Tesla Motors and the commonly known, Paypal.
I love the way the electrical cars from Tesla look.
Recently, Kevin Rose has recorded this interview with Elon, which I recommend.
One of the books that Elon recommends is the biography of Benjamin Franklin by Walter Isaacson (Amazon link). Isaacson is a great biographer and this is certainly on my reading list. (Just finished the biographies of Einstein and Jobs.)
Last week at Tilburg University, I attended a lecture / masterclass of the MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle. (Organized by the Dutch Nexus Institute).
The question that came to my mind, was not so much psychological as it was philosophical. Nature, the physical world, has many layers of detail and just as many realms of complexity. On the one hand, there are the microscopical and sub-microscopical levels. Little particles seem forever to be comprised of even smaller sub-particles. This level of complexity seems endless. On the other hand, there is the level of the stars, planets, milky way and universe. There is a countless number of stars and the universe is immense. So, at the macroscopic level, the complexity is endless to.
But even if you restrict you view to only the realm of humanity, there are different levels of complexity. On the one hand, you can have the social interactions within the family and on the other end the whole world with global trade, the Internet, global media. Life can be very simple, like the life you have in your street and the contact you have with your neighbors. Also, the contact with elderly people and children can be very simple and straightforward.
With all these different levels of complexity or simplicity in the human realm, the question for me is not which one of these levels are the reality, since they all seem to be real in their own vein. The question that I find interesting is: what is our natural level of complexity, what realm is the most relevant to the human condition, contributes most to our being?
James Gleick, the science journalist / author, has written and published an important book about the history of information, information theory and information flood, The Information (Amazon Link)
I have read this excellent article by Freeman Dyson on the New York Times Review of Books. Dyson summarizes:
According to Gleick, the impact of information on human affairs came in three installments: first the history, the thousands of years during which people created and exchanged information without the concept of measuring it; second the theory, first formulated by Shannon; third the flood, in which we now live.
The New York Times itself has also featured a review by Janet Maslin, entitled Drumbeat to E-Mail: The Medium and the Message which added to my eagerness to get my hands on this book.