Jill Lepore on the ‘Artificial State’ and why Silicon Valley’s leaders are bad sci-fi readers
TechCrunch Anthony Ha, Theresa Loconsolo ● Covered by 2 sources
Opinion — commentary, not a factual news event.
Historian Jill Lepore argues that tech company leaders use grandiose governmental language to describe their products because they are poor readers of science fiction and fail to grasp the cautionary lessons embedded in the genre. Her forthcoming book, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, examines how Silicon Valley companies like Twitter and Anthropic adopt quasi-governmental framing for their platforms and systems. The pattern suggests tech leaders misunderstand the implications of their own creations and the historical warnings that speculative fiction offers.
Why it matters
Historian Jill Lepore has a theory about why tech companies often use soaring language to describe their products — almost as if they’re forming a new government. And whether you’re thinking of Twitter’s old “town hall in your pocket” or Anthropic’s Claude constitution, it’s a theory that doesn’t paint Silicon Valley in a very flattering light. In Lepore’s upcoming book, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, the Pulitzer […]