…The advance includes reconciliation of commitments to the free market and atomization and segregation of individual technology companies to recruit and maintain generations that include us who do subs like financial markets and Tinker like consultations. -Alexander C. Carp and Nicholas W. Zamiska, Technical Republic: Hard Power, Soft Conviction, Western Future, p. 217
Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska are CEOs and Head of Corporate Affairs of Palantir Technologies, respectively, of Silicon Valley, which provides software to businesses and governments. It uses machine intelligence to solve problems and is related to security.
In their book, “Technological Republic,” the author explained in 2012 how the US military could better predict the location of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) using Afghanistan’s Palantir software.
In Afghanistan, created by Palantir, we found a band of dedicated supporters, especially in the US special forces, with teams capable of quickly navigating and connecting contexts before intelligence and missions. p. 152
Part of this book is a meditation on emerging cultures. But most of the books may have read something to a professor of classical music, about 1985, mid-decade of greed, IZ-erets’ crude materialism and lack of interest in western civilization, or a higher goal in life.
Stylishly, the Technical Republic is influenced by the intellectual writing academics of the 20th century. In a section of only six pages, the authors see and/or quote Thomas Hart Benton, Jackson Pollock, Jack Kerouac, Rene Girard, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Isaiah Berlin, Herbert Hoover and John Dewey.
The description of startup culture emphasizes organizational structures with minimal hierarchy. I myself write, “The more titles an organization has, the more they will choose for people who really care about the title.” The author writes,
…We tried to cultivate a culture that was seen as instrumental rather than essential goodness. There are all human institutions, organizational personnel measures, including Silicon Valley’s technology giants, and such organizations often require the promotion of a particular individual. The difference is the stiffness of these structures, that is, their speed can be interrupted or rearranged, and the proportional energy of the workforce that maintains such structures and leads to self-promotion within them. p. 125
They point out that the concept of engineering is practical. The software must work. Employees need to feel the account. Interadas of cultures of criticism have been studied in terms of systematic causes and solutions.
Higher motivation
“The author shows that too many Silicon Valley companies are trying to make a big profit by solving most of the problems.”
The author shows that too many Silicon Valley companies are trying to make great profits by solving most of the problems. They prefer to focus more on what they see as important issues, such as national security and health.
The author has many opportunities to lightly corn the development of finance, consulting, and especially shopping and entertainment applications, but is not a social justice activist. They take pride in applying Palantir software to help police.
The view that advanced technology and software are not featured in local law enforcement is a typical “luxurious belief” using Autor Rob Henderson terminology. The risk is that we have abandoned our moral or ethical systems around outcomes – the most important outcome for people (less hunger, crime, disease) in favor of far more performant discourse… p. 177-178
I came away from the Technical Republic with sub-insights, but I was left with som i too
One question is how Palantir can adapt to sell to governments and large businesses. Large organizations have a thorough evaluation of major purchases, leading them to a long and unfavorable process. You can meet with mid-level staff who are not even allowed to make a purchase decision. You need to navigate the complex internal politics within your organization and the competitive interests. I liked to see an example that submitted an example that showed how Palantir could have done it.
For more information about these topics, see
Another question concerns government culture. How worried is the author that the government may not be ingested to adapt to the pace of change, especially in the early fields of artificial intelligence? What do you recommend that they have to provide to civil servants?
The last question I have concerns the nature of the “republic” that the author has in mind. Is the partnership between engineering elites and political leadership really a solution? What role does it leave for the rest of us?
*Arnold Kling has a PhD. Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of harsh books that include the Crisis of Abundance. Invisible Wealth: A hidden story of how markets work. Unchecked imbalance: How contradictions of knowledge and power create financial crisis and threaten democracy. Specialization and Trade: A Reintroduction to Economics. I contributed to Econlog from January 2003 to August 2012.
Read more about what Arnold Kling is reading. For book reviews and articles by Arnold Kling, see the archives.
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