Ever scrolled through your feed at 2 a.m. and suddenly felt… owned? Not in some dramatic, tinfoil-hat way, but quietly, inescapably. Like every tap feeds something bigger than you. I had that moment last week, and it hit harder than my third coffee.
We laugh about being the product when the service is free, but the joke stopped being funny somewhere around 2018. What we built together – this shimmering, addictive, always-on digital world – has quietly become the most successful feudal system in human history. And the lords? They wear hoodies, not crowns.
Welcome to the New Middle Ages
Let me paint you a picture that feels almost too neat, except it isn’t.
In the old feudal system, you were born on a piece of land. That land belonged to a lord. You worked it, you gave him most of what you produced, and in exchange he offered protection (sometimes) and the right to keep breathing. Leaving wasn’t really an option – where would you go?
Fast-forward a thousand years. You’re born into the internet. Your attention, your relationships, your photos, your political opinions, your late-night impulse purchases – they all happen on digital land owned by a handful of companies. You produce the value (data, content, network effects). They collect the rent. Forever.
Sure, you can “leave.” You can delete your account. Good luck functioning in 2025 without messaging apps, maps, email, cloud storage, or the basic ability to prove who you are online.
The Illusion of Choice
People love to say, “Just use something else.” I tried that experiment last year. I spent a month attempting to live outside the usual suspects. No Google search, no Amazon, no Meta platforms. Know what I discovered? Modern society is built on quicksand when you remove those pillars.
Job applications wanted LinkedIn logins. Event invites came through Facebook. Two-factor authentication codes arrived via Google’s SMS. Even my city’s public transit app required a Google Play account to update. Opting out wasn’t rebellion – it was slow-motion exile.
“If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product” stopped being clever and became infrastructure.
When Companies Outgrow Countries
Here’s the part that keeps me up at night: these aren’t even American companies anymore in any meaningful sense. They’re post-national entities.
Think about it. When was the last time a government told one of the big platforms what to do and actually got obeyed without a decade-long court battle? Meanwhile, platforms change election outcomes, redraw maps, decide which voices reach millions, and store the most intimate details of billions of lives.
- They operate private court systems (content moderation at scale)
- They collect tribute (data)
- They control infrastructure more critical than roads or electricity in many countries
- They answer to no electorate
That’s not capitalism anymore. That’s sovereignty.
Your Digital Identity Isn’t Yours
Losing your phone feels catastrophic because your entire life lives behind a login screen you don’t actually control. I watched a friend get permanently locked out of an account that held ten years of family photos because an automated system flagged something innocuous. No appeal worked. No human ever reviewed it. That’s not a bug – that’s the lord asserting property rights.
We’ve normalized a world where private corporations can erase your digital existence faster than any government ever could.
The Architecture Was the Original Sin
The tragedy is we did this to ourselves with the best intentions. We built centralized systems because they were cheaper, faster, and scaled beautifully. Nobody set out to create digital serfdom. It just turned out that convenience compounds into control.
Every time we clicked “Accept All Cookies” (who reads those?), we handed over another acre of our digital land.
Is There Actually a Way Out?
Here’s where the story stops being depressing and starts getting interesting.
The original Industrial Revolution didn’t overthrow feudalism with better politics. It overthrew it with better tools. Steam engines, factories, and railroads changed the material conditions so completely that the old system became impossible to maintain.
We’re watching the early days of something similar – except this time the steam engine is cryptographic proof and the factory is a global network of nodes anyone can run.
What Real Digital Ownership Looks Like
Imagine waking up tomorrow and your online life works like this:
- Your identity lives in a wallet you control – no company can revoke it
- Your social graph is portable – leave any app without losing friends or history
- Your data earns you money instead of making someone else rich
- You log in to new services with cryptographic proof, not password theater
- Algorithms are open and auditable, not black boxes
This isn’t science fiction. Pieces of it already exist. The question is whether we build the rest before the feudal system hardens into something permanent.
Why Institutions Are Quietly Terrified
Governments and corporations are starting to realize they’re tenants, not owners. When your national health records live in a cloud controlled by an American company, that’s not infrastructure – that’s vassalage.
Some countries have figured this out. Others are building their own alternatives not because blockchain is cool, but because being a digital colony is starting to feel… uncomfortable.
The Revolution Won’t Look Like You Expect
Nobody is storming Mountain View with pitchforks. The change will be boring, technical, and unstoppable – exactly how the most enduring revolutions always work.
It’ll be better identity protocols. Open storage networks. Apps that pay you for your data instead of harvesting it. Standards that let you take your reputation anywhere. Small, compounding advantages that make the old feudal platforms gradually irrelevant.
Think less French Revolution, more Wikipedia eating encyclopedias alive.
The most powerful revolutions are the ones that make the old world uncompetitive rather than illegal.
What You Can Do Right Now (Yes, You)
Waiting for perfect solutions is how we got here. Start treating your digital life like property you intend to keep:
- Move photos off corporate platforms to storage you control
- Experiment with decentralized identity (yes, it’s clunky – early steam engines were too)
- Support apps that let you own your data or pay you for it
- Use open protocols when they exist (email still works this way – remember that?)
- Teach your kids that “free” apps have hidden prices
None of these actions will dismantle the empire tomorrow. But collectively? They’re dry rot in the castle walls.
We’re at one of those rare moments where the architecture of power is still somewhat malleable. Ten years from now, today’s choices will look either tragically shortsighted or miraculously prescient.
The lords built magnificent castles. But castles were never actually invincible – they just looked that way until someone invented cannons.
We’re building the cannons.
