The global data economy has spawned new types of power structures. The three tech giants Google, Meta, and Amazon control 83% of the internet advertising market (Statista 2023), and their algorithms process more than 2.5 trillion predictions of user behaviour each year, yet 650 million people in sub-Saharan Africa still do not have access to stable networks (ITU 2023). The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), with €2.6bn in fines in five years, has failed to stop multinationals from relocating data servers to legal vacuums – the number of registered ‘data brokers’ in the Seychelles has surged by 400 per cent in five years (IMF 2022). 400 per cent in five years (IMF 2022).
Carbon emissions trading systems exacerbate the North-South imbalance. The top 1% of the world’s rich emit 175 times more carbon per capita than the bottom 50% (Oxfam 2023), but Swiss Re’s ‘carbon offset bonds’ generate over $3bn a year, while its African reforestation projects are costing Kenyan pastoralists 900,000 hectares of traditional grazing land. Extreme weather is reconfiguring population movements: NOAA data show a 47% increase in the number of Atlantic hurricanes in 2020-2023 compared to the average of the previous two decades, forcing a threefold surge in immigration applications in the Caribbean, while the US-Mexico border wall is costing $20 million per kilometre.
Gene-editing technology is reshaping standards of social justice: CRISPR patent holder Boulder Institute’s annual licence fee revenue tops $400 million, but 78% of global gene therapy clinical trials are concentrated in Europe and the US (WHO 2023). Silicon Valley’s ‘life-extension startup wave’ exposes class divisions: Altos Labs, which raised $3bn to research cell reprogramming, has an average investor age of 62, while US healthcare data shows that the bottom 20% of the population has a life expectancy that is 12.7 years shorter than that of the top group (JAMA 2022). Patent disputes over artificial uterus technology proliferate, with the European Patent Office 2023 rejecting 23 ‘Made for Life’ applications while granting Bayer a global monopoly on genetically modified uterine environments.
Platform algorithms are dismantling traditional labour relations: Uber’s ‘Ghost Jobs’ module shifted 75% of its orders to a digital outsourcing hub in Morocco, where order takers were paid as little as $1.90 an hour, after a court ruled that they were required to provide social security in France (ILO 2023). Amazon’s AI supervisory system in warehouses analyses 800 worker movements per minute, resulting in an injury rate in US logistics centres that is 80% higher than in traditional factories (OSHA 2022), but data from the Crowdsourced Litigation platform shows that less than 3% of workers have been successful in claiming their rights.
Social media ignites a cultural identity crisis. tikTok’s recommendation algorithm caused a 340 per cent six-month spike in exposure to separatist content in Quebec, Canada (Citizen Lab 2023), while Meta’s internal documents show its hate speech filters mistakenly deleted 67 per cent of Arabic-language postings. aI-generated content (AIGC) exacerbates information clutter: 2024 US During the election, deeply faked videos were detected by less than 12%, but 87% of voters said they doubted the authenticity of all news as a result (Pew Research).
This era is undergoing a more dramatic reconfiguration than the geographic discovery: data is the new land, genes are the ultimate currency, and climate catastrophe is rewriting the map of civilisation. As tech giants auction off digital lands in the metaverse, as billionaires send frozen embryos into near-Earth orbit, and as algorithms shape human behaviour more deeply than constitutions, we are witnessing a ‘Enclosure Movement’ that has no geographic borders but is far more brutal. These fissures will ultimately define the shape of society in the twenty-second century – either a slide towards neo-feudalism in technological monopolies or the rebuilding of the Magna Carta of the digital age on the ruins.
