Is Elon Musk a Philip K. Dick fan?
One of the perks of the digital age is that we have unprecedented access to the thoughts of incredibly powerful people. Never before have we been able to intimately experience the president’s thoughts on Coke or Cher’s thoughts on . . . Coke. Even Chrissy Teigen can’t leave Twitter for more than a few weeks; there’s a sense we might be equal-opportunity addicted. This is fun, sometimes, but also often leads to a powerful person tweeting out something that makes very little sense and then everyone else analyzing it. (Just look at the last four years.) I am part of the problem, because one of Elon Musk’s recent tweets raises a lot of questions I can’t stop myself from asking.
At 4:13 AM yesterday, Musk tweeted this:
Pluto takes 248 years to orbit the sun, but Uranus only takes 84
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 14, 2021
Seven minutes later he tweeted this:
Could turn out to be one big Philip K Dick joke in the end
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 14, 2021
What could turn out to be one big Philip K. Dick joke in the end, Elon? Is he referring to his previous orbit-related tweet—simply noting how real life is like science fiction? Might this simply be a rude pun? Quote tweeters posit that Musk might be referring to the meme cryptocurrency Dogecoin gaining popularity, or the hacker group Anonymous insulting him, or Jeff Bezos going to space; all reasonable theories.
Is Elon Musk a Philip K. Dick fan? And if he is, what does he think about Dick’s preoccupation with environmental destruction? What would Philip K. Dick have to say about bitcoin? What character does Musk see himself as? What do the 3.8 thousand members of the “Elon Musk is a Philip K Dick Villain” Facebook group think of Musk’s tweet?
Musk hasn’t answered any of these questions, but he did add a helpful follow-up:
K is Kindred
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 14, 2021
You’re not wrong, Elon. You’re not wrong.
