February 05, 2024

59. I Physically Recoiled from the Book at That Point.

54 minutes

Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Oriana’s choice of topic: Silicon Valley’s

misinterpretation and fetishization of Tolkien. Tolkien of course lived in a

time where computers were mostly huge rooms containing one machine or two that

he doubtless considered little more than another example of why the industrial

age didn’t suit his mindset on many fronts. But in the half-century since his

death the PC era up through smartphones and TikTok have made the industry one

of the biggest and most influential in the world – which is the problem. The

issues discussed are hardly limited to them but two of its most well-known and

notorious avatars in recent years, Peter Thiel and his protege Palmer Luckey,

have among other things named various businesses of questionable use and worth

(at best) after characters and terms from Tolkien’s legendarium as part of

their general quest to own everything and be everywhere whether one likes it

or not. There is, however, the small problem that they think they might be

Aragorns when it’s much more accurate to call them Saruman and Wormtongue.

What are the roots of Thiel’s own particular worldview in particular, shaped

by colonial legacies of the kind that Tolkien himself notably loathed? What

are the various poisonous ironies of naming particular businesses after

certain Tolkien-derived terms considering their original meaning and what they

now represent? Can the Tolkien Estate themselves actually do anything about

the use and misuse of such terms to start with? And why in the world did Thiel

think that a good choice of quote from Tolkien was in fact a quote from an

original Rankin-Bass song instead?

Show Notes.

Jared’s

doodle.

Remember, the idea is to NOT be this kind of person.

Queen Margrethe bows out, and hey, why not enjoy

retirement?

One of various pieces on Margrethe’s Tolkien

illustrations, with some relevant samples.

We share TheOneRing.net’s

piece mentioned for reasons of

completeness. Our eyes remain gimlet.

Never invent the torment nexus.

Peter Thiel. Great. Just great.

The biography Oriana and Jared read for the episode was Max Chafkin’s The

Contrarian.

Techno-fascism!

RETVRN! Terms that

should not exist but here we are. Umberto Eco’s “Ur-Fascism” is

worth your time.

Palantir Technologies.

Oh, how lovely. Human rights, what are

those! And why are they even slightly involved with the

NHS? (Beyond Tories being

Tories.)

Palmer Luckey. Another piece of

work, for fun! Founder of Anduril

Industries, about which

this 2018 Wired article reveals more maybe than anyone involved intended.

Ah, Ready Player One and

Ernest Cline. We’re…not fans.

If you want to know our thoughts on “The Greatest Adventure” and more besides,

enjoy our Rankin-Bass Hobbit

episode…

That whole taking your money with you when you die thing, jeez. Mother Jones

with the details. As

Ned said, go the Chinese burial

money route instead.

The Last Ringbearer aka

the Russian LOTR revamp, as we’ve referred to before.

Wicked the book is

not Wicked the musical.

(Soon to be Wicked the movie

musical.)

Tim Alberta’s book, which probably isn’t

light nighttime reading, is The Kingdom, The Power and the

Glory. This

excerpt mentioned focuses on his father’s church;

the further anecdote recalled is from another piece elsewhere, possibly by

Alberta.

Tolkien Gateway has some of the further details from Unfinished Tales on

palantir

technology as

such.

The TechCrunch article about Anduril Industries’s rather paranoid geopolitical

dreams.

Quick reminder about our orcs

episode and the various issues

that crop up with them. (Plus the Scouring of the Shire

episode.)

Blood in the Machine by Brian

Merchant takes a proper historical look at the

Luddites as part of a meditation on

labor and Big Tech in the present.

Thiel buying his New Zealand

citizenship was not great! At

least James Cameron put in the time and actually did

stuff.

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By Jared Pechaček, Oriana Scwindt, and Ned Raggett

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