时文阅读：“世界新首富”埃隆·马斯克

发布时间：2021-02-04 05:52:46 来源：文档文库

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时文阅读：“世界新首富”埃隆·马斯克

How Elon Musk Became Elon Musk

Elon Musk just became the richest person in the world, with a net worth of more than $185 billion. Thursday’s increase in Tesla’s share price pushed Musk past Jeff Bezos, who had been the richest person since 2017 and is currently worth about $184 billion. Musk’s wealth surge（剧增）over the past year marks the fastest rise to the top of the rich list in history.

Elon Musk is the co-founder of PayPal (PYPL), Tesla Motors (TSLA), and SolarCity (SCTY), and is the founder of SpaceX. His surprising success has given rise to comparisons of Musk and Steve Jobs, Howard Hughes, Henry Ford, and Bill Gates. During an often difficult childhood, Musk developed a continuous work ethic（职业道德）(He is known to work as many as 80 to 100 hours per week.) and a tenacious（顽强的）single-minded vision.

He is the oldest of three children in an ambitious family. After his parents divorced when he was a child, Musk lived mostly with his father. He read many books and was also a crazy fan of comics. Self-described as a bookworm and something of a smart aleck（自作聪明的人）, he was bullied（欺负）in school and withdrew to his books at the expense of his social life. At the age of 10, Musk was introduced to computers. He quickly learned how to program. At that time, Musk, along with his brother, planned to open a video game arcade（游戏机室）near their school. Finally, their parents nixed the plan. But apparently the only thing stopping them was the need for a city permit which had to be applied for by an adult.

Musk’s intellectual genius did him few favors as a child. He found few friends in the tough-minded Afrikaner（荷兰裔南非白人的）culture he encountered in school. “I had a terrible upbringing. I had a lot of adversity（逆境）growing up. One thing I worry about with my kids is that they don’t face enough adversity.” Musk started school a year early; he attended the English-speaking Waterkloof House Preparatory School, and later graduated from Pretoria Boys High School. The years were lonely and cruel, from his descriptions.

If there was a point of bright escape for Musk, it was technology. When he was only 10, he became familiar with programming via the Commodore VIC-20, an inexpensive home computer. Before long, he had become skilled enough to create Blastar — a video game in the style of Space-Invaders. He sold the basic code for the game to a magazine called PC and Office Technology for $500. It can be considered as the start of his legendary career.

【主题语境】人与社会——历史、社会与文化——对社会突出贡献的人物

埃隆·马斯克出生于1971年，企业家、慈善家，出生于南非，毕业于宾夕法尼亚大学，以SpaceX的创办者及特斯拉汽车和PayPal的联合创办人而闻名，是2019年霍金科学传播奖获得者，现任SpaceX CEO兼CTO，被誉为“硅谷钢铁侠”。2021年1月8日，最新彭博亿万富翁指数显示，埃隆·马斯克资产高达1950亿美元，成为全球新首富。