Interesting that he mentions Elon as being the archetypal "phase 3" nerd, since he was fairly high profile in all 3 phases and his reputation during the "phase 1" and "phase 2" timelines pretty much matched the author's description of the archetypal founder from those periods too.

I guess in a roundabout way, what I'm trying to say is that I wonder how much of this is a change in PR rather than a change in the people themselves.