Elon Musk. Twitter. Babylon Bee.

[temporal1]

It will be interesting to see, my gut says probably not.
In tech world a year is forever, the next big thing in social media could have taken over by then making Twitter look like Myspace or Yahoo. Also I don't see a clear path to government subsidy for Twitter which has been a factor in his successes so far.

The younger generations are not so connected through Twitter. We will have to see how it develops.

I think he has some long term plans that are not being discussed or looked at.
One is phones having access to the Starlink network and able to send voice and text .. and Tweets through it anywhere in the world.
The technology is already there. He just has o get bigger satellites up. He is already working on that with the next SpaceX ship he will launch this month. He also expects some explosions from that at first.

I think Twitter will be morphed into a new way to communicate in the next 5 years, maybe sooner.
For those of you have have seen Terminator. Mush is building Skynet.

i haven’t seen Termintor/Mush/Skynet.

i continue to think of the internet as being in its infancy. it’s not settled.
as i imagine the wheel likely caused all manner havoc before brakes, Roman roads were used for ‘way more than military expansion, automobiles were invented before street signs and The Rules of the Road.

monkey chimpanzee chimp

[Ken]

i continue to think of the internet as being in its infancy. it’s not settled.
as i imagine the wheel likely caused all manner havoc before brakes, Roman roads were used for ‘way more than military expansion, automobiles were invented before street signs and The Rules of the Road.

Actually roads and street signs existed for many centuries before the invention of the automobile. And laws governing speech and the regulation of speech existed long before the invention of the internet. And the Second Amendment long preceded the invention of the breech loading rifle, rifle cartridge and pretty much every form of firearm in use today.

Here is an 1896 cycling map of Portland OR. Back then people traveled by horse drawn carriage, streetcar, train, ferry, and bicycle. And yes, there were lots of street signs. The first automobile was not manufactured and sold in the US until 1898, two years after the publication of this map.

[temporal1]

yes, many original trails+paths followed animal trails. for good reason.
that doesn’t alter my intended point that refinements+improvements often follow inventions, not vice versa.

[Robert]

Twitter is currently the 15th most popular social media platform in the world. There is nothing it does that can't be replicated by any other tech company with deep pockets.

It is not the technology but the client base that matters. Most US politicians and media use Twitter. Some it is their official social media source.

Starlink is very cool, but I don't see how it ever becomes more than just a niche product since land-based wireless service is always going to be much cheaper and easier and 99.99% of phone users don't care about whether they can get a signal or call someone in rural Congo or Antarctica. What people care about is phone size, battery life, screen size etc. They also want to be on the same system that all their friends and family are on. And any phone with a transmitter powerful enough to reach outer space is by definition going to be a lot bigger and have less battery life than a phone with a transmitter that only needs to reach the nearest cell tower 1/2 mile away.

Musk has already made an agreement with T Mobile to provide satellite access to their existing cell phones. There are a lot of rural places that phones will not work. With Starlink, they will now. All this is pretty much with existing tech. Starlink just needs to launch their 2.0 satellites. That is planned for 2023 with the success of their Starship launch.

Low orbit satellites are very effective and fast.

My concern is Elon Musk will have a very powerful place in space, industry and society. While I like what he does now, this does not mean I will always like it or trust it. We do need to be careful moving forward diversifying power.

[temporal1]

My concern is Elon Musk will have a very powerful place in space, industry and society.

While I like what he does now, this does not mean I will always like it or trust it.

We do need to be careful moving forward diversifying power.

For sure.
There is no one way to guarantee optimum outcomes. Every human construct is vulnerable to failure, and corruption.
Every one, bar none.

We’re getting a taste of what some nations may choose, and, some corporate committees! -
Nothing surprising at all. Tech magnifies+speeds up old-old human problems.

There are plenty of warnings about committee decisions:

lots more: https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/committee-quotes

Probably the worst are gov committees.

[barnhart]

... It would probably take a big tech company like Google about 3 days to replicate Twitter's technology. Most of the actual work that makes such a platform successful is on the human side in the form of content moderation, advertising sales, etc...

I agree. The human side is what makes it a community. The culture of a network like Twitter either gives it life and growth or can kill it.

[Ken]

Twitter is currently the 15th most popular social media platform in the world. There is nothing it does that can't be replicated by any other tech company with deep pockets.

It is not the technology but the client base that matters. Most US politicians and media use Twitter. Some it is their official social media source.

Starlink is very cool, but I don't see how it ever becomes more than just a niche product since land-based wireless service is always going to be much cheaper and easier and 99.99% of phone users don't care about whether they can get a signal or call someone in rural Congo or Antarctica. What people care about is phone size, battery life, screen size etc. They also want to be on the same system that all their friends and family are on. And any phone with a transmitter powerful enough to reach outer space is by definition going to be a lot bigger and have less battery life than a phone with a transmitter that only needs to reach the nearest cell tower 1/2 mile away.

Musk has already made an agreement with T Mobile to provide satellite access to their existing cell phones. There are a lot of rural places that phones will not work. With Starlink, they will now. All this is pretty much with existing tech. Starlink just needs to launch their 2.0 satellites. That is planned for 2023 with the success of their Starship launch.

Low orbit satellites are very effective and fast.

My concern is Elon Musk will have a very powerful place in space, industry and society. While I like what he does now, this does not mean I will always like it or trust it. We do need to be careful moving forward diversifying power.

This is still all vaporware.

Musk's existing Starlink satellites transmit and receive on 10.7 to 12.7 gigahertz frequencies. Cell phones work on completely different 900/1,800/1,900 MHz frequencies so it is impossible for the existing Starlink network to talk to existing cell phones, even if they could transmit that far.

Musk has to put up new satellites that transmit and receive on cell phone frequencies in order to talk to existing cell phones. None of his existing satellites will work. But he can't actually legally do that because he doesn't actually own any spectrum in the regular cell phone frequencies because the existing wireless providers long ago bought it all up during the spectrum auctions. So he has to partner with an existing wireless company like T-Mobile in order to have his satellites broadcast at cell phone frequencies. And he will probably have to do the same thing in every other country where he wants to transmit and receive using existing cell phone frequencies since cell phone spectrum has already been allocated across the planet to existing companies.

In any event, when you read the fine print of their announcement you find that they have most definitely not worked out all the technical issues related to existing cell phones talking to satellites. In fact their announcement says:

“We need to do more than reprogram the satellite; we’re making a special antenna, the most advanced phased array antennas in the world. They have to pick up a very quiet signal from your cell phone,” said Musk at the event. “There’s quite a bit of complex hardware and software, because it is moving so fast — they’re traveling overhead at 17,000 miles per hour. Normally a cell phone tower does not travel at 17,000 miles per hour.”

At first the service will only enable text messages, and possibly messaging apps, though Sievert warned that “we haven’t actually begun working with other companies… it’s a bit of a technical problem that we need help from the partner with.” There would probably also be a considerable delay of “half an hour or so” until the message is sent or received.

Half an hour lag time to send a text message? No ability to even make a voice call?

That doesn't sound like world-beating technology. You can do far better than that with existing Iridium and Immarat satellite phones that have been around for 25 years. And those are what most remote users such as ships at sea actually use today.

[Robert]

This is still all vaporware.

Again the extreme view. It is not ALL vaporware. Much of this is in process. No. It will not be like land based service. I can remember cell phones when they first came out. They were terrible and very spotty and analog. Musk already said they have the antenna technology, they just have to deploy them. They are too big for Falcon9. Starship will be able to deploy them. This is why at first it will be slow and spotty. Once all the 2.0 satellites are up, there will be much better coverage IN RURAL AREAS where there are no or few towers. Starlink has kept Ukraine with access during the conflict. Land and sky can work together easily.

One thing I have learned about Elon Musk is he is very intelligent and has a really good business mind. He has run the numbers and knows more than he shares. I do think he overpaid for Twitter, but it was the customer base he was after. Google already tried to replace facebook and twitter with Google+. It died because of no customer base.

Just like Mennonet, the more that are driven away the sooner it goes away. I wonder if some have intentionally tried to do that at times.

[Josh]

I’ve lobbed a lot of criticism over the years at Musk’s fanciful projects, going back to PayPal - I thought it would never make it big. Now I have to accept PayPal for a large fraction of our customers, whether I want to or not, and accept their ever increasing fees.

I thought Tesla would never make it and always rely on subsidies. Now I see Teslas everywhere. People go and pay full price for them. Home chargers are commonplace now and fast chargers abound. My in law relatives took a trip from California to Tennessee in one one with a full complement of growing children.

SpaceX also seemed like a boondoggle - yet they’ve replaced both NASA and the Russians for getting payloads into space.

I would not bet against Mr Musk. Twitter seems even more outlandish yet it is succeeding, cutting costs, increasing engagement, and even getting more advertisers on the platform. He is a shrewd businessman and knows how to deal with employees, investors, and governments.

[Ken]

This is still all vaporware.

Again the extreme view. It is not ALL vaporware. Much of this is in process. No. It will not be like land based service. I can remember cell phones when they first came out. They were terrible and very spotty and analog. Musk already said they have the antenna technology, they just have to deploy them. They are too big for Falcon9. Starship will be able to deploy them. This is why at first it will be slow and spotty. Once all the 2.0 satellites are up, there will be much better coverage IN RURAL AREAS where there are no or few towers. Starlink has kept Ukraine with access during the conflict. Land and sky can work together easily.

One thing I have learned about Elon Musk is he is very intelligent and has a really good business mind. He has run the numbers and knows more than he shares. I do think he overpaid for Twitter, but it was the customer base he was after. Google already tried to replace facebook and twitter with Google+. It died because of no customer base.

Just like Mennonet, the more that are driven away the sooner it goes away. I wonder if some have intentionally tried to do that at times.

It is vaporware because you can't today take a T-Mobile branded iPhone out to the desert beyond reach of the nearest cell tower and make calls or communicate via satellite.

Some day in the unspecified future they promise you will maybe be able to send a simple text message that takes 1/2 hour to transmit. Beyond that there are no promises at all of when (if ever) it will be possible to use your cell phone in any ordinary way via satellite, or how much this will cost.

Yes, Starlink exists, just like Immarsat and Iridium satellite phones also exist and have for years. But none of them are remotely cheap or convenient enough to replace ordinary cell phone service. They are all big, bulky, and expensive. Existing cell phones have evolved to meet very specific criteria of battery life, screen quality, transmission rate, and app processing. Trying to use one to reach satellites in outer space is kind of like using a butter knife to butcher a steer. Sure you might maybe sort of make it work with some kludges. But it isn't going to be fun or very useful.

I tend to view satellite service with ordinary cellphones like Elon Musk's boring company that was supposed to build hyperloop systems to replace subways in big cities. That is turned out to be a complete vaporware fiasco. The only thing he has built is a tiny tunnel in Vegas where they just run ordinary Teslas on tracks.

In a previous life when I was still single I was also a cave exploration diver and shipwreck diver. When I saw Elon try to intervene into that Thai cave rescue a few years back with the idea of a mini-sub I knew he was completely out of his depth and just plain wrong. That whole episode is actually what first soured me on Elon's "genius."