"Technofeudalism" and the War for Your Attention

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Greece’s former finance minister and public intellectual, Yanis Varoufakis, has produced a provocative thesis that is relevant to the vast majority of us who engage with tech. While he is primarily an economist, and the book itself is rooted in economics, history, and politics, Varoufakis’ text contains claims that are relevant to those interested in psychology, especially Big Tech and its potential to modify our behavior and hold our attention.

While traditionally, capitalism concerned itself with profit and the market, Varoufakis describes the emergence of a new ruling class, those who own the virtual spaces within which so much of our lives now occur, and shape our behavior. He names Google and Apple as being among the primary feudal lords and cloud capitalists. Why he terms it feudalism is due to other companies having to rent space within these dominions, such as those who want to sell their apps on the Apple Store. We lowly tech users are the "cloud serfs," with our engagement with tech products, whether it's sharing our photos, opinions, or reviews, or uploading our journey progress, being akin to our labor. Without our "labor," the purpose and value of these companies would decrease; the better they are at capturing our attention and inviting our engagement, the more successful they become.

Varoufakis sources the beginning of the war for our attention to the emergence of television, and the need for pre-cable TV companies to make money. While they did not yet have the technology to charge people for watching, what they could do instead is produce commanding content that garnered people's attention, and then charge advertisers for the opportunity to advertise alongside their attention-grabbing content. We can see how this model has been nurtured with the steroids of technological advancement, and the ability to both personalize content and harvest personal data. Further to this, the ability for our devices themselves to capture our attention is unprecedented; they are steeped in behavioral design and are quite simply too good at drawing us in with engagement.

Where things take an even deeper turn is within the idea that this data that we volunteer gives AI and algorithms more sources of data to know us, and in turn, impact and modify our behavior. Such modifications can include encouraging us to walk more or sleep better, but also, to buy more, or to think a certain way. The behavioral components of this new relationship are fascinating, and harbor the potential for a great deal of good, as well as corporate misuse, too.

Not all implications are behavioral. Varoufakis also directs energy toward the pressures of social media on us, especially the young. For young people today, “curating an identity online is not optional,” with this not only serving the economic functions of Big Tech, but also posing threats for the well-being of us all, and especially the young. While this might seem like an exaggeration, consider the work of Jonathan Haidt and his claim that social media has led to poorer mental health outcomes for the young, and especially for girls. Haidt’s advocacy for harder restrictions on social media for children adds to a growing tide that has seen countries such as China and Australia enact hard restrictions on social media use amongst children.

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Being an economist, Varoufakis himself does not offer too many psychological solutions, and instead focuses on economic ones such as the democratization of tech companies. Highlighting how the new economic reality differs from the old, he states that in more traditional companies such as General Electric, ExxonMobil, and General Motors, salaries and wages took around 80% of a company’s income. With Big Tech companies, workers collect less than 1% of a company’s revenue. This will likely be unsettling to most, even those who strongly disagree with Varoufakis’ politics.

Where Varoufakis’ approach might be psychologically original is that typically, warnings against the impacts of social media use and unrestricted Big Tech, from within psychology, have tended toward warnings about their impact on mental health and well-being. Varoufakis’ work packages the economic component of our behavior. Some might be more concerned with the idea that they are essentially providing free "labor," in the form of their engagement, data sharing, and content creation, than they would be with concerns about well-being.

His consideration of economics, politics, and history can also serve as a reminder about the potential power that is being developed by Big Tech, and the impact that this can have on the thoughts, behavior, and well-being of all of us.