Palantir’s Call to Arms Is Also a Sales Pitch
The Technological Republic, a new book from Palantir CEO Alex Karp, proposes a dark and dismal future.
Illustration: Deena So'Oteh for Bloomberg
It’s a major complaint of the authors of The Technological Republic (Crown Currency, Feb. 18) that people today shrink from saying what they think. Too many of us, they insist, give mealy-mouthed, wishy-washy answers when asked. We have become uncomfortable with making moral and aesthetic judgments, they say.
I agree, and I’m going to break the taboos. The Technological Republic is a terrible book: badly written, tedious, and — when they can be gleaned in between the jargon, clichés and repetitions — full of bad ideas, ranging from the merely dubious to the execrable and disturbing. This book is dismal on the level of both form and content. It heralds a dark and depressing future.