«I just want to grow in my job, do something meaningful, do more than earn a paycheck until I die.»
Donna in «The West Wing»
Love him or hate him, at least Elon Musk seems to have a vision for mankind’s future:
«… there are a lot of negative things in the world. There’s a lot of terrible things that are happening all over the world, all the time. There are lots of problems that need to get solved. There’s lots of things that are miserable and can get you down. But life cannot just be about solving one miserable problem after another. That can’t be the only thing. There need to be things that inspire you, that make you glad to wake up in the morning and be part of humanity. That’s why we did this. There’s a guy called Tsiolkovsky, one of the early Russian rocket scientists, a great saying, ‹Earth is the cradle of humanity, but you cannot stay in the cradle forever.› It is time to go forth, become a star-faring civilization, be out there among the stars, expand the scope and scale of human consciousness. I find that incredibly exciting. That makes me glad to be alive. I hope you feel the same way.»
Elon Musk
And yeah, he’s totally right. It also reminds me of Peter Thiel’s book «Zero to One» in which he outlines as one of four possible paths for mankind:
The last of the four possibilities is the hardest one to imagine: accelerating takeoff toward a much better future. The end result of such a breakthrough could take a number of forms, but any one of them would be so different from the present as to defy description.
«Zero to One» by Peter Thiel (2014)
While the book is now ten years old and — at least regarding AI a bit dated — it is still an interesting (and very short) read.
So yeah, wouldn’t that be a vision?