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The Tech Giants Have Created a Digital Class System

Welcome to the new feudalism.

Kyle Chastain
5 min readSep 22, 2021

Forget about The Hunger Games or Cyberpunk, the future is medieval.

Six hundred years ago, vassals pledged their allegiance to their lords in exchange for land and protection. Today, we pledge our allegiance to the tech giants, and they, in return, provide a digital landscape (which they own) for you to gain exposure. You produce data and content like medieval peasants produced crops for their lords.

It’s digital feudalism.

You know the worst part?

We’ve let the tech giants do it because it’s more convenient to let someone else deal with your data than to do it yourself. We assume the digital lords have our best interest at heart because it’s too scary to imagine otherwise.

The future isn’t like a lost Cold War dystopian epic with gleaming neon cities surrounded by desolate wastelands. The most valuable lands are now on the internet.

This is how digital feudalism works

As we enter this new age, you owe it to yourself to understand the landscape.

Defined broadly, feudalism is a way of structuring society where wealthy landowners allowed lower classes to use their land in exchange for…

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Kyle Chastain
Kyle Chastain

Written by Kyle Chastain

On a mission to become a better writer and storyteller | Building my "Insight" newsletter to 10k+ | Create the life you want: https://chastain.substack.com/

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