I strongly doubt Apple and Tesla are going to merge, or Apple is going to merge with any Elon Musk company. Elon hates Apple and will resist any attempt at takeover. If Apple succeeds, Elon will leave and probably take the top talent with him leaving Apple with a hollow shell.
Apple is currently into decline as a cutting edge consumer company. Everything they have brought to market since the Model S was introduced (2012) has just been tweaks and derivatives of existing products. Tim Cook is a very competent CEO, but he isn't the spark plug Steve Jobs was.
Microsoft has been down this road. Back in the 90s they were a very splashy consumer products company. Windows 95 was the biggest success with consumer buzz, but they spent years chasing that rainbow with diminishing success. Microsoft is a major tech company. I believe their market cap surpassed Apple's recently (if not it's close), but their dominance is with infrastructure and business products than consumer these days.
I expect Apple will evolve into a backroom tech giant like Microsoft and some other company or companies will be the next consumer darling.
There is a lot to say here. First off I have been doing some neurofeedback (hook electrodes to your head and manipulate brain signals to help with various issues, it' known to help with ADD, fibermialgia, PTSD, and a number of other problems) and the guy I'm seeing is one of the top people in the world. We were talking a few weeks back and he mentioned he personally knows the guys behind Neurolink. The tech needed is all there on the shelf with things like coclear implants for the hearing impaired, but they are putting together the pieces in a new way.
He like I are concerned that this tech could further the gap between the "haves" and "have nots". The problem with any tech like this is that it's going to first become available to a very small population at first who have the money to get the surgery. They could monopolize the tech so they control who gets it and only those who can afford it, or who are deemed useful to the elites will get the tech, and the rest of the population will be left to starve. Anyone who is a lackey of the elites who falls out with them will simply have their implant turned off.
And all computers connected to other computers can be hacked. What happens when someone's brain is hacked? We have enough problems now with foreign governments messing with one another, what happens when one government hijacks the brain of another world leader? Of hijacks the brain of a prominent person in a position to do their bidding, or just steals everything the person has access to.
With automation coming on, we already have 10% or so of the population who are not employable. Whatever they are capable of doing can be done quicker and easier by a machine. Throughout history there was always something else those people could do, but machines have gotten sophisticated enough there is no room in the economy for the bottom 10% of skill sets.
Automation like self driving vehicles and automated kitchens will push another 10-20% of the population out of the workforce.
Neurolink poses the possibility to put 50-75% of the population out of work. What happens to society then? Nick Hanaur has been warning that when the gap between the top earners in society and the bottom gets too wide, one of two things happen: a violent overthrow of the elites (French Revolution), or a crushing dictatorship with a few rich people and the rest of the population fighting over the scraps.
I've also started reading a book written by the author of
American Nations called
American Character.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143110004/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i3
It's sort of a sequel to American Nations, but he looks at more than just America. It's more about societal dynamics in general. In human culture history has been about a three way pull between the mass of the population vs the government vs the elites. The bulk of the population are at their best when the forces of government and elites are kept in check in a healthy way. If the government is too strong, you get totalitarian regimes like the USSR or Nazi Germany. If the government is too weak, the elites fill the power vacuum and they become the abusers of the population. Which is happening in many places around the world today.
Cultures that have the happiest populations are usually ones where the government is just strong enough and structured correctly to keep the elites in check, and the elites have some power, but not too much.
My concern is that technology like neurolink could supercharge the power of the elites in such a way there is no coming back.
The link takes you to a parking page for some reason.
