Time magazine on Monday named Tesla chief and space entrepreneur Elon Musk as its person of the year, citing his embodiment of the technological shifts but also troubling trends reshaping people’s lives.
Among those trends, Felsenthal listed “the continuing decline of traditional institutions in favor of individuals; government dysfunction that has delivered more power and responsibility to business and chasms of wealth and opportunity.”Time editors have previously defined the title — which last year went to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris — as going to people who “embodied what was important about the year, for better or for worse.
He has also courted controversy with his provocative Twitter feed that can attack, joke and provoke — including a poll in November asking Twitter whether he should sell a 10 percent share of his Tesla stock.Felsenthal noted Musk’s provocative vision is accompanied by a persona which is a “blunt instrument that often seems to revel in division and aggressive mockery as he gives the world access to his id through social media.
“The goal overall has been to make life multi-planetary and enable humanity to become a spacefaring civilization,” Musk told Time in an interview released with the Person of the Year announcement.