“The bad people, they know they’re being watched.”
Mor-Don’t
Life imitates art. And oftentimes, so do tech bro capitalists — although in a way that often makes us wonder if they actually understood the subject matter.
Case in point, there’s a Silicon Valley start-up offering high-tech security and surveillance solutions for wealthy people’s personal abodes-turned-fortresses — common theme these days — that’s recently secured millions of dollars in funding, the Washington Post reports. And you know what it’s called? We are not kidding: Sauron.
Fittingly, one of Sauron’s chief products is its “deterrence pod,” a detection system that pairs with an autonomous drone that wards off trespassers by blasting them with a powerful, ominous logo-emblazoned search light, sweeping over their movements. This hooks up to a central system that provides a real-time, 3D rendering of your home, while human private security agents monitor the detectors installed on your premises.
Don’t mistake all this for sounding merely dystopian. As you might’ve guessed, the company is named after the literal embodiment of evil in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” saga. And with its deterrence pod, it even has its own omnipotent Eye.
“It’s a little overt, a little tongue-in-cheek,” but it sends the right message, co-founder Kevin Hartz told WaPo. “The bad people, they know they’re being watched.”
Point Mistaken
You have to wonder if that’s the message they want to be sending, assuming they see themselves as the heroes in this story. Does Hartz think Sauron was the good guy? And that Frodo and company were evil and deserved being mind-surveilled by the omnipotent Dark Lord?
Maybe we’re thinking too hard about the whole thing. Maybe it’s a bad joke — but clearly the fear that calling your autonomous surveillance tech Sauron instills is the point! So you can add it to a long list of tech CEOs either taking the wrong points away from their favorite books and movies, or just thoughtlessly lifting names and concepts from them.
To wit: OpenAI’s Sam Altman and the movie “Her,” Elon Musk with seemingly every sci-fi blockbuster ever made, and Mark Zuckerberg naming his attempt at a Metaverse after what Neal Stephenson described in his novel “Snow Crash” — the list goes on.
As the popular meme goes, a speculative fiction novel may warn not to build the Torment Nexus — but have you considered that “Torment Nexus” sounds kinda cool?
Dark Fantasy
We regret to inform you, though, that the Tolkien connections don’t end there.
Sauron recently secured $18 million in funding, and according to WaPo, some of that money came from executives from the notorious data surveillance firm and defense contractor Palantir — which itself is named after the seeing stones from Lord of the Rings used to communicate across vast distances, but which could also be insidiously abused to spy on others in possession of one.
What’s more, Palantir just announced a partnership with the defense company Anduril to develop AI systems for military purposes. And you guessed it: Anduril is the name of the legendary sword bestowed to Aragorn in the fantasy series.
It all makes us wonder: does our reality need a Fellowship of its own to stop tech assholes from ruining beloved stories?
More on surveillance: Schools Are Using AI Surveillance to Catch Students Vaping Inside Bathrooms
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