Goodbye, Technopolis

Dominic Cummings reached near the apex of British politics with ambitions of building a ‘meritocratic technopolis’. Why did these dreams implode so spectacularly? Could they ever have been fulfilled?

A few weeks ago, the most high-profile special adviser in British government left office, carrying ARPA, the superforecaster, Napoleon’s retreat from Russia, Mistah Kurtz, Otto von Bismarck, the battlements of Barnard Castle, and a coterie of visionary technologists in his cardboard box.

While Dominic Cummings’ unprecedented reign in the shadow of Britain’s highest office may have ended in a notional failure — though Cummings previously described firings such as his, and the ostensible disgrace(s) that surrounded it, as part of the traditional ceremony of a figure in government, and one which is generally greeted by its recipient without so much as a murmur — it was not without its share of, shall we say, considerable results either. In his coordination of Vote Leave’s prosecution of Britain’s EU referendum, he shaped a generation against the odds. It may be a generation, or more, before the ideological tumult around that event has settled sufficiently that domestic actors can parse it with a relatively even-hand, for every day in Britain between June…