Technofeudalism

Technofeudalism is like a modern version of feudalism in which the fiefs are in the digital world rather than the physical world.

Unlike feudalism, technofeudalism is not about the ownership of farmland, but rather the virtual landscape comprising the sum total of all humans' attention spans. Instead of crops, a digital fief can be used to cultivate data and consumption.

Near-synonym: neofeudalism

Plus, it makes a good meme. The hungry crowds on Reddit and Twitter love it: a YouTube video of a discussion on techno-feudalism by Varoufakis and Slavoj Žižek garnered over 300,000 views in just three weeks.

This is the vision underlying the technofeudalism thesis, which holds that 21st-century capitalism has been superseded by a new economic system overseen by Big Tech.

Specifically, the Great Inflation and cost-of-living crisis that have followed the recent pandemic cannot be properly understood outside the context of technofeudalism.