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Elon Musk

Mr. Musk took his Paypal payout and created not one but two crazy ambitious startups: Tesla, which makes sick electric sports cars, as well as SpaceX which--maybe you've heard?--is a commercial aerospace company. That's right: He's building a space fleet. (Photo via flickr.com/jurvetson)

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Peter Thiel

Ever looked at the website for the Founders Fund, Peter Thiel's VC fund? The homepage greets you with, "We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters." It proceeds to cycle through their areas of interest, including machine intelligence, and aerospace. We're not even going to get into the Singularity Institute. Also, if this New Yorker profile is any indication, he would very much like to be immortal, or at least to extend his lifespan to whatever extent possible. (Photo via flickr.com/TechCrunch50-2008)

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Sergey Brin and Larry Page

Two words: Google Glasses. Oh, and a couple more: driverless car. That picture above? It's Google cofounder Sergey Brin wearing the glasses, taking the President of Turkey for a spin in a computerized automotive. Granted, Mr. Brin and Mr. Page aren't using their personal fortunes for these projects, but we felt obligated to include them nonetheless. Because Google Glasses. (Photo via twitter.com/google)

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Kim Dotcom

Not everyone looks up to the good guys. Some kids want to be Lex Luthor. We suspect there is a good chance that Kim Dotcom was one of those kids. Between the sports cars with the licenses saying "GOD" and "GUILTY" to the panic room to the trip to Monte Carlo to everything else, until very recently this guy lived the life of a Bond villain and he did it with style and he didn't even have to threaten the planet with lasers. Also, to listen to the MPAA and the RIAA, he is literally a super villain.

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Chris Hughes

This is a rather more bookish dream, but come on -- didn't any of you readers ever want to run your own magazine? That's exactly what Facebook cofounder Mr. Hughes gets to do, now that he's purchased The New Republic and taken over as editor-in-chief and publisher. And it's not like he needs ad dollars to make rent, either. Who hasn't, at one moment or another, fantasized about living the fun part of Charles Foster Kane's life? (photo via flickr.com/dsearls)

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Jeff Bezos

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is involved in what may be the most ridiculously ambitious project on this list: the Clock of the Long Now. The plan is to build a giant clock that can run for 10,000 years in a remote location. No big thing. The idea was originally proposed by someone else, but Mr. Bezos is funding the project and it's being built on property that he owns. He told Wired:

“Over the lifetime of this clock, the United States won’t exist,” Bezos tells me. “Whole civilizations will rise and fall. New systems of government will be invented. You can’t imagine the world — no one can — that we’re trying to get this clock to pass through.”

Perhaps he could talk Mr. Thiel into keeping an eye on things. (photo via flickr.com/AustinBrown)