The Context: Elon Musk Is Jolting

What does it mean that Elon Musk is jolting? He understands that in order to reach the ambitious missions of his companies in time, exponential change is not enough anymore.

To transition humanity to renewable energy before runaway climate change creates irreversible damage, Tesla must produce cars, solar systems, batteries, in such volumes, that it would be impossible with the current rate of innovation. The goal would be unreachable. But Tesla is compounding the rate of innovation to unprecedented levels, starting from first principles, creating new mining processes for raw minerals, up to new types of automated factories.

To make humanity an interplanetary species, with a self sustaining colony on Mars of one million people, able to survive even if the resupplying spaceships from Earth stop arriving, SpaceX must similarly increase the rate of innovation to resolve the huge challenges it has. Not only in launch capability, space refueling, and transportation, but also life support systems, extreme sustainability and recycling on the surface of Mars, and many more.

From the point of view of a linear mind set both goals are plain impossible. From that of an exponential mindset, they may take too long. The new mindset that is accustomed to the jolting paradigm of increasing acceleration in technological change is necessary to not only make these ambitious goals achievable, but to do so within the time constraints in front of us.

Elon Musk understands this, he has this kind of mindset. Elon Musk is jolting.