The promise of the New Economy gone, we have regressed into the age of techno-feudalism The promise of the New Economy gone, we have regressed into the age of techno-feudalism

The rise of the IT industry in the nineties promised a new era of freedom and prosperity. It didn't deliver. Certainly, algorithms are everywhere, but capitalism is no more civilised than ever.

In fact, in the hands of private corporations, the digitalisation of the world drives us towards a darker future. The return of monopolies, the dominance of a few platforms, the blurred distinction between the economic and the political all epitomise a systemic mutation. Information and data networks push the digital economy in the direction of the feudal logic of rent, dispossession, and personal domination.

How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-feudalism offers a fresh genealogy of the Silicon Valley consensus and its contradictions. It disentangles the principles of an emerging systemwide rationale. Large firms compete in cyberspace to gain control over data, and ordinary people are increasingly at the mercy of tech giants. In this new economic order, capital is moving away from production to focus on predation.

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Cédric Durand is Professor of political economy at the University of Geneva and the author of several books, including Fictitious Capital: How Finance is Appropriating our Future and How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-Feudalism: The Making of the Digital Economy. He regularly contributes to the New Left Review.