Platform power required political commons-plunder before any invention

Evidence

A strikingly similar sequence gave birth to cloud capital: first, the epic ransacking of the internet commons, made possible by politicians, and then a sequence of spectacular technological inventions – from Sergey Brin’s search engine to the dazzling array of today’s AI applications. In short, in the last two and a half centuries, humanity has had to reckon with two singularities, neither of which required machines to attain sentience. Rather, each required a comprehensive plunder of a commons, a complicit political class, and only then a marvellous technological breakthrough. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 281

Categorization

• XREF: Sets up the core structural analogy driving the whole book: internet commons ransacking parallels land enclosures. — connects to: Platform power required the prior privatization of the Internet commons — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 357; Platforms’ convening power forces all content into platform-ready extractive form. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 129; Most social interactions escape capitalist valorisation, which is why platforms must be built — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 53

Broader Connections

• Platform power required the prior privatization of the Internet commons #corroborates (0.95) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 357
• Platforms’ convening power forces all content into platform-ready extractive form. #expands (0.78) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 129
• Most social interactions escape capitalist valorisation, which is why platforms must be built #expands (0.72) — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 53