This is razor-sharp, Mary --- thanks for writing it.
As someone watching all this unfold from across the pond, I’m still trying to wrap my head around how figures like Musk manage to cast themselves as saviours while behaving like cartoon villains with media empires. Two things really struck me: your framing of Musk’s "mythos" as something propped up by influencers and branding rather than actual rigour, and the way you link his reproductive ambitions to a larger, disturbing logic of legacy and control. That line, “He’s not building a family, he’s seeding a colony”, just floored me.
If anything, I’d have appreciated a bit more on how this cult of personality operates in the workplace too, the more ambient, normalised versions of techno-feudalism that most of us feel but can’t always name.
To a certain extent, I tried to dig into that in my own piece, "Techno-Feudalism at Work: The Factory Has Gone Digital", and an earlier one titled "Downton Abbey is Not a Governance Model". Where your piece exposes the emperor, I think mine sits quietly with the people still working in his imaginary palace.
Wow— fantastic piece! Shared and shared again
This is razor-sharp, Mary --- thanks for writing it.
As someone watching all this unfold from across the pond, I’m still trying to wrap my head around how figures like Musk manage to cast themselves as saviours while behaving like cartoon villains with media empires. Two things really struck me: your framing of Musk’s "mythos" as something propped up by influencers and branding rather than actual rigour, and the way you link his reproductive ambitions to a larger, disturbing logic of legacy and control. That line, “He’s not building a family, he’s seeding a colony”, just floored me.
If anything, I’d have appreciated a bit more on how this cult of personality operates in the workplace too, the more ambient, normalised versions of techno-feudalism that most of us feel but can’t always name.
To a certain extent, I tried to dig into that in my own piece, "Techno-Feudalism at Work: The Factory Has Gone Digital", and an earlier one titled "Downton Abbey is Not a Governance Model". Where your piece exposes the emperor, I think mine sits quietly with the people still working in his imaginary palace.
Appreciate the clarity and force of this one!