technofeudalism

Französischen Bilder, Bazooka, 1976, from Pierre Ponant’s private collection

essay 

by DANIEL PINCHBECK 

 

Daniel Pinchbeck is an American author, cultural critic, and host of the podcast Liminal News, known for his explorations of consciousness, psychedelics, ecology, and social transformation. His most recent book, Afterlife: Is There Consciousness After Death? (2022), investigates the possibility of life beyond death.

 

“Technofeudalism,” a term created by Greek economist Yannis Varoufakis, encompasses the emerging economic and political order in which a small group of tech oligarchs and platform owners exert near-total control over digital networks, data flows, and algorithmic modulation, bypassing democratic institutions and public safeguards. Unlike classical capitalism, where capitalists compete in markets and depend on wage labor, techno-feudal lords extract value through surveillance, behavioral manipulation, the capture of attention, and control of what should be our data and information commons. We get reduced to data-serfs,…