Elon Musk – genius cult around a car dealer

In view of the alliance between big-tech, media monopolies and the right-wing government of the United States, many see democracy in danger. This merger is no coincidence. As rebellious nerds, the representatives of the Silicon Valley used to have worked a little more droll, but something undemocratic have always contained their projects.

You benefit from the fact that technology development is mostly accepted, admired or feared in the media. Political questions about the privatization of the public infrastructure, which the Internet means, have been asked too rarely since the 2000s.

In a episode of the “Star Trek Discovery” series, which was released in 2017 and which played in the early 23rd century, the crew of the spaceship faces a technical problem with the drive. The responsible engineer threatens to despair. To motivate him, his supervisor keeps a small speech: “How should you remember them?” Asks the captain. »In a row with the Wright brothers, Elon Musk, Zefram Cochrane? Or as any failed scientist? “

The screenwriters are therefore placed in a great job between the Wright brothers and the inventor of the warp drive, which means that the decisive technological milestone between the beginnings of the aircraft technology on planet earth around 1903 and the interstellar space travel has been attributed since 2061. Sequel follows.

This little appearance is only one of many media representations that Musk classify as a visionary and pioneer. Before his politically right -wing attitude in Germany became apparent in the AfD election campaign, the admiration for the technological developments he financed prevailed in the media. As if quick cars and rockets would make progress progress. He is happy to be ennobled as a genius, a ZDF documentary describes his career with exactly this title. He could have been better referred to as union enemy, multi -illiarist, opponents of climatic activism, queer -anti -queer network activists, supporters of Trumps, operators and owners of a controversial rocket base or car dealer. All of this is not awesome. But Musk benefits from the image of the ingenious tech visionary. This is old and was reissued by the New Economy.

Musk’s cocketry with the nerd image shows how effective this picture is. A bit of dark fashion, comics and Star Trek, then everyone knows where to classify himself. It has something to do with this idea of ​​the nerd as a clever outsider that the privatization of the digital infrastructure due to the large corporations of the New Economy rarely got headwind. And with it also something with the way media reported on technology development.

This impertinentity of the industry comes from its Wilhelminian era. Since the commercialization of the Internet as a rebellious counterpart, the new economic elite has been built into conservative old economy, which rejects its values: »Governments of the Industrial World, You Weary Giants of Flesh and Steel, I Come From Cyberspace, The New Home Of Mind. On Stealf of the Future, I Ask You of the Past to Leave Us Alone. You are not Welcome Among Us. You have no sovereignty where we gather, «John Perry Barlow, one of the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, formulated in a» Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace «, which he presented on the edge of the Economic Forum in Davos. Everyone should be able to enter the cyberspace without reservations.

This narrative lasted for a long time. It formulated a likeable image for advocates of market freedom. This can be observed at the “Wired” magazine. Founded in 1993, “Wired” is a kind of lifestyle magazine, comparable to “Vogue” or “Rolling Stone”. “The New Economy’s mouthpiece, the medium of computer geeks and tech freaks and the collecting basin for all those who have a name in Silicon Valley or are just doing one,” writes the cultural scientist Alessandra Beagioni. Beagioni examined texts and pictures of all editions from ten years, from 1995 to 2005. It states that after a change of editorial team, the commercial topics of the tech scene outweighed the dotcom bubble, while explicitly political discussions disappeared. Instead, Jeff Bezos and Co. are portrayed as a tech entrepreneurs and represented as a messy, playful and unable to everyday children. Your gimmicks are toys, video consoles, synthesizers, sweets, scrollers.

This type of staging depolits and makes entrepreneurs genius. The social origin (rich) and position (white, male, no care tasks) The entrepreneur is not questioned. Your political lobby used for as much market as possible with liberal values. Technical knowledge meets money. “The geeks that used to be stigmatized became cool types of winning,” writes Beagioni.

Many media still carry this picture today. When it comes to technology, the focus is on either the entrepreneurs as interesting people. Or it is reported on products, then mostly from a technical or economic point of view. This is how the “Tagesschau” in the category of knowledge about a generative Large Language model of a start-up from China: “Deepseek, the horror of the US tech giants” and also reports the waste of value from other companies on the stock market. Economic effects of product development and also superlatives in performance are highlighted.

What is undemocratic about it: the media attitude towards technology development is usually passive. Media meet innovations with enthusiasm or fear, are suitable for the “genius and madness”. Sometimes data law issues are discussed, and HATE-Speech in social media is also an issue. Explanatory pieces about new applications, such as artificial intelligence, are increasing. But a collective, democratic view of technology development is missing, it is up to the companies. There is critical research and with the chaos computer club, network policy and algorithwatch, also civil society voices. And there are examples of political discussions about how technology develops and how use and access should be designed: nuclear power, but also pregnancy prevention, the Corona warning app, the heat pump.

This passive attitude is no coincidence. It follows widespread social discourses on technology and progress. In many technology museums, variants of such hero stories about inventors and explorers can still be found today. Here the Wright, Elon Musk, Zefram Cochrane brothers-perhaps also the desperate spaceship engineer from the »Star Trek« sequence-could form a number. In addition to the technical key figures of the objects and biographical data about their creators, the exhibitions convey three self -evident: First, that technical progress is measured, especially in increasing performance indicators: more horsepower, more computing power, faster machines. Second, that this progress is mostly thanks to a few male, brilliant and efficient men. Third, the perspective is limited to what is considered technology and progress. It is mostly about mobility and production, not household appliances or queer feminist knowledge production to gender. Conversely, this means that those who can enable technology development must be a hero.

And the Economy alliance around Trump benefits from all this. From the restricted view of technology and who can shape them, from the image of the entrepreneurs as ingenious outsider who will at the end of success and the unsurdedness of private ownership and market freedom in capitalism.

Instead of further limiting yourself to genius reports, the media could question these balance of power: When are media monopolies big enough to expropriate them? Which tools and moderations need new, collective social media formats to recognize radicalization and false information? Or: When does the speed limit built into cars come? Do the bodies – as in some Teslas – work similarly to a tank? And: When was it actually decided that the universe should be privatized by multi -billionaires? In »Star Trek« the missions take place in the democratic sense on behalf of humanity.