There's currently quite a bit of controversy right now surrounding Elon Musk and his potential purchase of Twitter, his views of free speech, and how that could change social media in the years to come. Musk recently appeared in an interview on a TED video published less than two weeks ago that's already amassed more than 4.5 million views.
Musk's Twitter buyout is certainly a topic for another newsletter. But something more relevant to this newsletter is the portion of the TED interview where he discusses the fact that he has Asperger syndrome (I didn't know this until I saw that part) and what it means for how his brain works.
You can watch the full segment where he discusses his condition starting at 42:36, but here's a few relevant quotes:
"I did not have a happy childhood, to be frank. It was quite rough. But I read a lot of books, I read lots and lots of books, and so ... I gradually understood more from the books I was reading ... But it took me a while to understand things that most people intuitively understand."
And further:
"I think there's maybe some value also from a technology standpoint, because I found it rewarding to spend all night programming computers, just by myself and I think most people don't enjoy typing strange symbols into a computer by themselves all night. They think that's not fun, but I thought it was – I really liked it."
I think many of you who were raised on computer programming may feel the same way, so I thought that was the most interesting part of the interview from a tech productivity perspective.
Before this video I had never really seen Musk much outside of his Twitter feed, so it really did surprise me what a poor public speaker he is, which I believe is related to his condition. He's generally difficult to listen to due to his stammering, but it's quite amazing how much he's accomplished in spite of all that.
Now on to this week's hand-picked productivity links!
