Billionaire Elon Musk has been chosen as the “Time’s person of the year”.
According to the magazine, Musk not only emerged as the world’s richest person in 2021 but “also as perhaps the richest example of a massive shift in our society”.
It said that the 50-year-old zillionaire, with 66 million Twitter followers, has been chosen for his work in space as well as on electric cars, as well as his plans to take humanity to Mars and for his interest in cryptocurrency.
“For creating solutions to an existential crisis, for embodying the possibilities and the perils of the age of tech titans, for driving society’s most daring and disruptive transformations, Elon Musk is TIME’s 2021 Person of the Year,” the magazine said.
Further, the magazine noted that Musk being the richest man in the world “does not own a house and has recently been selling off his fortune”.
“He tosses satellites into orbit and harnesses the sun; he drives a car he created that uses no gas and barely needs a driver. With a flick of his finger, the stock market soars or swoons. An army of devotees hangs on his every utterance. He dreams of Mars as he bestrides Earth, square-jawed and indomitable. Lately, Elon Musk also likes to live-tweet his poops”.
The prestigious award, which has been running since 1927, was also given to Musk’s arch rival Jeff Bezos in 1999 and to Mark Zuckerberg in 2010.
The magazine said Bezos and Zuckerberg were awarded “well before it was clear what Facebook’s full effect on society and democracy would be”; and the same goes for Musk.
“We don’t yet know how fully Tesla, SpaceX and the ventures Musk has yet to think up will change our lives. At 50, he has plenty of time to write the future, his own and ours. Like it or not, we are now in Musk’s world,” the magazine said.
