Platforms as Digital Fiefdoms

I don't remember who first told me to read Yanis Varoufakis's Techno-Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism, but whoever you are—thank you and also how dare you. This book broke something in my brain, in that good way where you realize the map you've been using doesn't match the territory anymore and now you have to rethink everything. Varoufakis isn't a theologian, but reading him felt like encountering a prophetic voice—someone naming the powers and principalities of our moment with a clarity that made me uncomfortable in all the right ways.

So what you're about to read isn't exactly a book review. It's more like the stuff that ran through my head while I was reading—the connections I couldn't stop making to our faith, our politics, our souls. I kept thinking about Paul's language of powers and principalities. I kept thinking about the psalmist's warning against idols. I kept thinking about Jesus flipping tables in the temple, and wondering what he'd do with an algorithm. Varoufakis gave me a new vocabulary for something I'd been feeling but couldn't name: the sense that we've crossed into a new kind of unfreedom, one that's less about chains on our bodies and more about the curation of our desires.

Consider this an invitation. Read the book. Argue with it. Let it mess with you. And then let's figure out together what faithfulness looks like when the lords live in the cloud.

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