Meet Your Digital Lords: How Tech Giants Became the New Nobility

In our gleaming towers of technological innovation, we've unwittingly recreated the social structure of the Middle Ages. While we carry supercomputers in our pockets and summon goods with the tap of a screen, we've become digital peasants toiling in the virtual fields of tech lords who harvest our data instead of our crops. The parallels between medieval feudalism and our current techno-feudal system are not just striking, they're darkly humorous if you enjoy watching history repeat itself with shinier gadgets.

The Manor Becomes the Platform

Medieval society was organized around the manor, a self-contained economic unit where serfs worked the land owned by lords in exchange for protection and the right to subsist. Today, as philosopher Jaron Lanier argues in "Who Owns the Future?", we inhabit digital manors called platforms. These platforms, social media networks, search engines, and e-commerce sites, represent the enclosed spaces where we conduct our digital lives.

Just as medieval serfs couldn't imagine life outside their lord's protection, we can hardly conceive of social or professional existence without submitting to the terms of service of our digital overlords. How many of us have actually read those agreements before clicking "I accept"? About as many serfs who reviewed their feudal contracts, I'd wager.

Political economist Shoshana Zuboff's concept of "surveillance capitalism" detailed in her book "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" describes how our online activities are harvested as "behavioral surplus." This surplus is processed into prediction products that anticipate what we'll do next, and sold to the highest bidder.

Isn't it wonderful how we willingly surrender our privacy, attention, and personal data in exchange for the privilege of using "free" services? The medieval serf at least received tangible protection from marauders. We receive targeted ads and algorithmic recommendations that somehow always know we need a new toaster right after our old one breaks.

The Tech Lords and Their Fiefdoms

Just as medieval Europe was carved into territories controlled by competing nobles, our digital landscape is dominated by a handful of tech giants. Evgeny Morozov, a prominent critic of technological solutionism, points out that these companies function as de facto sovereigns, establishing their own rules, currencies, and even "citizenship requirements" for participation.

When Mark Zuckerberg appears before Congress, the spectacle resembles nothing so much as a powerful duke reluctantly attending the king's court, paying nominal respect while everyone knows where the real power lies. At least the feudal lords of old couldn't algorithmically manipulate their subjects' emotions through A/B testing.

Medieval serfs were bound to their land, required to work for their lords without monetary compensation. Digital sociologist Antonio Casilli describes how we perform "digital labor" every time we create content, moderate forums, or train algorithms through our interactions, all without compensation.

The gig economy presents an especially perfect replication of feudal obligations. As political philosopher Nick Srnicek argues in "Platform Capitalism," gig workers pledge allegiance to platform lords who extract surplus value while providing just enough compensation for subsistence. Unlike medieval serfs, however, today's digital laborers get to maintain the comforting fiction that they are "entrepreneurs" or "independent contractors." Isn't it remarkable how liberating it feels to have no healthcare, no job security, and no benefits? The freedom is simply intoxicating.

Algorithmic Control and Digital Manorialism

Medieval lords maintained control through customs, traditions, and the occasional public punishment. Today's tech-feudal lords employ sophisticated algorithms that shape our behavior in ways far more pervasive and subtle. As media theorist Benjamin Bratton argues in "The Stack," computational systems have created new forms of sovereignty that transcend traditional governance.

The brilliance of algorithmic governance is its invisibility. We don't even see the walls of our digital manors, they're personalized and rendered in real-time. Your TikTok feed is yours alone, customized to maximize your engagement (the digital equivalent of crop yield). When an algorithm decides what you see, who you meet, and what opportunities come your way, are you really any more free than the medieval peasant whose world extended no further than the edge of his lord's estate?

The New Aristocracy and Their Noblesse Oblige

Medieval nobility occasionally demonstrated "noblesse oblige", the notion that with privilege comes responsibility. Today's tech aristocracy similarly engages in philanthropy, pledging to solve the very social problems their business models often exacerbate.

As historian Yuval Noah Harari suggests in "Homo Deus," the techno-elites are creating a new kind of aristocracy, one based on access to algorithms and data rather than bloodlines. When tech billionaires pledge to "make the world better" through their foundations, they're engaging in the same face-saving exercises as medieval lords who built cathedrals to assure their place in heaven. The difference is that our digital lords are building spacecraft instead, perhaps hedging their bets on which realm they'll ultimately need to escape to.

Resistance Is Feudal

What's most remarkable about our techno-feudal arrangement is how thoroughly we've internalized it. Political philosopher Byung-Chul Han describes in "Psychopolitics" how neoliberal subjects have become willing participants in their own exploitation, obsessively optimizing themselves to remain competitive in markets designed by others.

We don't even need the threat of physical violence to keep us in line, just the fear of irrelevance, of missing out, of being left behind in the digital dust. We voluntarily track our steps, monitor our sleep, and quantify our productivity—becoming both serf and overseer in one efficient package.

Perhaps the first step toward digital emancipation is recognizing the feudal structure we inhabit. As media theorist Douglas Rushkoff argues in "Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus," we need to question whether the platforms that dominate our digital lives are truly serving human needs or simply extracting maximum value from human activity.

Until then, we'll continue dutifully generating content for our platform lords, optimizing ourselves for algorithmic visibility, and accepting whatever scraps of attention and convenience fall from the digital banquet table. After all, what choice do we have? The digital manor may be exploitative, but at least it protects us from the terrifying prospect of disconnection.

And isn't that what feudalism was always about? Trading freedom for security, autonomy for convenience, and dignity for belonging? History doesn't repeat, but it certainly rhymes—especially when we code the rhythm ourselves.