Vox asks 'What would J.R.R. Tolkien think of Palantir?'

I'm doing something different for today's Sunday entertainment feature, an example of life imitating literature and cinema as Vox asks What would J.R.R. Tolkien think of Palantir?

Peter Thiel and Alex Karp’s Palantir Technologies is one of the most powerful and mysterious tech companies in Silicon Valley. Its namesake is also one of the most powerful and mysterious magical objects in the lore of J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy series The Lord of the Rings.

The palantiri of The Lord of the Rings are sort of like crystal balls or “seeing stones” that allow their users to communicate across vast distances, see events from afar, and sometimes even peer into the future. But just about everybody who tries to use a palantir in The Lord of the Rings is deceived by it, acting on the visions they’re receiving without the greater context or wisdom of what’s behind them. So why would the people behind Palantir want to name the company and build its culture around these powerful yet easily corruptible magical objects?

J.R.R. Tolkien was famously anti-tech and anti-government, expressing his fears of what would happen when those two forces combined through his fantasy works and his letters to friends, family, and colleagues. If he were alive in the age of Palantir, he might not be thrilled that a tech company with lucrative government contracts is name-checking his creations.

Vox producer Benjamin Stephen went on a quest to find out the story behind Palantir’s name, what the link to The Lord of the Rings reveals about the company, and what Tolkien might think about how his words are being used.

No, Tolkien would not be happy about Peter Thiel and Alex Karp using the Palantir and other names from his tales. Speaking of whom, I'm repeating what I wrote in Yahoo! News asks 'How does the 25th Amendment work?' A Veep Day special and recycled in J.D. Vance gets the 'Last Week Tonight' treatment.

Vance would be less erratic (mercurial would be a polite way of saying it) and not driven by Hoover Cleveland's obsessions with tariffs, grifts, and revenge, but he'd be more likely to implement the parts of Project 2025 that Hoover Cleveland hasn't yet. He'd also be more under the influence of Palantir founder Peter Thiel, his pet bad philosopher Curtis Yarvin, and Palantir CEO Alex Karp. They're the sources of what I called "cyberpunk villain ideas straight out of Snow Crash..." Vance can certainly learn new tricks, but I worry about the ones Thiel, Yarvin, and Karp could teach him. They might be worse.

Vance might also learn lessons from bad readings of classic fantasy in addition to the cyberpunk villain schemes, which Palantir certainly qualifies as.

Speaking of bad readings, Thiel and Karp naming their surveillance system after the palantiri may be a bad sign, as Robert of In Deep Geek relates as he asks and answers What Actually Are The Palantiri?

Robert explores the origins of these magical seeing stones, crafted by Fëanor in the Undying Lands. Discover their functions as early communication tools and their tragic histories within Middle-earth.

Sauron may have used the palantiri to deceive and influence Saruman and Denethor, but he deceived himself by misinterpreting what he saw through them, allowing himself to make a fatal strategic error that permitted the Fellowship of the Ring's plan to succeed. I wonder if that has occurred to Thiel and Karp. If so, maybe they they think they'll be like Aragorn and able to control their metaphorical crystal ball. I don't think either of them is Aragorn. If not, then they and their clients might be in for a series of unpleasant surprises as the technology backfires on them, as it did on Sauron, Saruman, and Denethor.

That's a wrap for today. See you tomorrow for another brief educational entry.