It’s been a week since Aarian Marshall at Wired published Elon Musk’s comments about public transport (“there’s like a bunch of random strangers, one of whom might be a serial killer”, etc.)
… which led to this exchange on Twitter …
… followed by a few other rude and thin-skinned tweets, all now deleted …
… which caused all kinds of unexpected things. Urban planning guru Brent Toderian launched the Twitter hashtag #GreatThingsThat HappenedOnTransit, where hundreds of people have told about great encounters with “a bunch of random strangers” on public transit; the Guardian has that story. Island Press instantly put my book on sale and sold out their inventory. And I’ve heard from hundreds of people who were offended by Musk’s comments, and by his response to mine.
Yesterday, in the Atlantic Citylab, I tried to lay out what it’s all about. Read that for the big picture. It’s much more interesting than a media roundup post!
Being called an idiot can change your life, or at least your schedule. At 6:15 AM today, a black limo appeared in front of my house and took me to a Fox Business segment with Stuart Varney. You can watch that here. And tonight I did both live and taped interviews with the BBC World Service’s Newsday program. It’s been a long day.
Now I hear Elon Musk is planning a blog post, which I look forward to.
The “Twitter war” meme … the “you won’t believe what he said!” … is really boring to me. I would much rather talk about what public transit is and why it’s so essential to great cities. At some point, I hope, Elon Musk will want to be part of that crusade. Because he’s a smart and effective guy.