Most people remember Pinocchio as a story about lying: tell a fib, your nose grows. But the late tech writer Om Malik argued in an essay that reading "misses almost everything." Carlo Collodi's original 1881 serial, before Disney sanded it down, is a bleak portrait of a society where "deception has gone ambient" — courts punish victims, experts are decorative, and the society is focused on spectacle instead of accountability.
Malik equated the swindlers Fox and Cat, who talk Pinocchio into burying his coins in the "Field of Miracles" so they'll multiply overnight, as the template for every modern grift, from crypto tokens to AI hype to the influencer flogging a supplement on TikTok. The Land of Toys, where children who choose endless amusement slowly turn into donkeys, is the algorithmic feed. "The nose is the least interesting lie in the book," he said.
Previously:
• Om Malik, 1966-2026
• OpenAI needs a 26x revenue increase to justify its buildout
