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Emotional the next morning. I'm in my Model 3. I haven't been looking at the road; I've been looking at videos, reading X, and trying to catch up on AI. I'm heading to a humanoid robotics conference in San Francisco where, let's be honest, there's an elephant in the room that hasn't been seen: Optimus. Jason Calacanis told me yesterday that as cool as the demo of the Roadster was, Optimus is going to be even cooler, and I believe him. We're heading into a new age, and we're seeing a fight between the builders and innovators who are creating new things with AI, and the people who are resisting: • Those who don't want a data center in their backyard • Those who don't want autonomous cars because they think they will steal jobs • Those who don't want humanoid robots in their stores or businesses because it upsets, disrupts, and changes their lives There is a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. But we are clearly in a new world today, very different from yesterday. I'm riding in an autonomous car, something most people haven't had a chance to experience yet. We're heading into a world of autonomy, brain-computer interfaces, rocket cars, glasses that augment the world, new kinds of medical technologies, and entirely new ways to live life. It's a scary time for people who don't like change, and they are resisting hard. But there is a growing group of people who want to accelerate into the future. Elon, for all his flaws, is inspiring multiple industries. I've been traveling to robotics and space companies around America, seeing the latest startups and trying to understand how new technologies arriving daily are transforming business, manufacturing, and commerce. Invariably, they are inspired by Elon. Even the Chinese EV companies were inspired by him (some even ripped off his technology). I'm emotional today because for the last 15 years (actually, all the way back to the Apple II), people resist change and give innovators a lot of shit. How many arguments have I had with people about LiDAR? And I'm not talking about uninformed people; I'm talking about veterans in the tech and automotive industries. Last week, I was hanging out with 2,500 Tesla fans down in Texas, and I kept hearing stories, particularly from Cybertruck owners, about getting flipped off on American roads and people trying to bash or wreck their cars. It's not just a Tesla thing; I've heard this from pioneers all my life. Doug Engelbart came to my first book launch party and told me about getting fired from his own R&D lab because his ideas were too futuristic and people got tired of him. He was talking about a day when we'd all hold a supercomputer in our hands, but he was saying that back in 1971. It's these pioneers and engineers I'm thinking about today: the people like Elon who bring something new to the world while everyone gives them grief. I remember taking my first ride in the original Tesla Roadster. I was so excited that I came back to Silicon Valley to talk to founders and VCs (I had a privileged position in the industry back then), and I couldn't find anyone who thought he would succeed. They dismissed it as the folly of a rich dude, telling me there was no way he could take on traditional automakers like GM, Ford, VW, BMW, or Toyota, and no way he could build a profitable car company. There were rare believers back in 2008, like Steve Jurvetson, but they were few and far between. Getting people to believe in a new idea, adopt it, and change their lives with it is extremely difficult. Unless you have a front-row seat, you don't realize how much flak people take simply for being early. Now I'm heading into San Francisco to see a bunch of robots and talk to robotics companies. Robotics hasn't fully arrived yet, but it's starting to gain believers and customers. A wave of new companies is coming: Y Combinator alone funded around 25 robotics startups in their last batch, a huge shift from just two or three a few years ago. Something is cooking