Boredom Leads to Great Things 43
blacks living in and around Pretoria. They were still segre-
gated, but lived close together around the city center. But
after the 1950s, thousands of residents were forced to move.
The city would consist of three areas where each area
was separated from the other by considerable distances,
agricultural land, and political boundaries.^78
The Musk family didn’t support the apartheid sys-
tem. Kimbal said it was surreal to grow up in South
Africa at the same time as all these extraordinary events
occurred.^327 Like most white people in South Africa, they
knew apartheid was wrong, but they couldn’t do much
about it. If you spoke out against apartheid, you could be
thrown into prison for three years.
As Elon grew up, he began to wonder what he wanted
to do with his life. “When I was young, I didn’t really
know what I was going to do when I got older,” he said.
“People kept asking me. Eventually, I thought the idea of
inventing things would be really cool. The reason I thought
that was because I read a quote from Arthur C. Clark, ‘A
sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from
magic.’ That’s really true.” Many years later, Elon held a
speech. “Engineers are the magicians of the 21st century,
don’t let anything hold you back. Imagination is the limit,”
he said.^63
An engineer can perform the same acts as magicians,
but the acts by the engineers are no illusions. While a
magician can convince an audience it’s possible to fly