Hello world.

After more than twenty-five years in the software industry, I now find myself in an unfamiliar position: an ex–Big Tech engineer with time to think. And when you suddenly have time, real, unstructured time, you start asking questions that never quite fit into sprint planning or quarterly OKRs. Questions about where all of this is going. About what kind of civilization we may be constructing, almost accidentally, through code, platforms, and incentives.

One possible answer is something historians would recognize immediately, even if we insist on calling it innovation: techno-feudalism.

A System That Refuses to Stay in the Past

To understand the idea, it helps to revisit classical feudalism—not as a medieval curiosity, but as one of the most stable socioeconomic systems humanity has ever produced. For centuries across Eurasia, feudal societies organized themselves around a simple structure:

* A vast majority, over 90%, were serfs, bound to land they did not own.

* A narrow middle layer, perhaps 5–10%, were specialists, tradespeople, clergy, or small landholders.

* At the very top sat the lords, fewer than 1%, who owned nearly everything.

Serfs possessed little beyond their labor. Land, tools, housing, and even access to basic resources were controlled by their lords and leased back in exchange for rent, often paid through work rather than money. Social mobility was rare, ownership rarer still.

The system was extractive, unequal, and often brutal. Yet it was astonishingly resilient. Feudalism endured not because it was just, but because it was economically self-reinforcing.

How Feudal Systems Sustained Themselves

When productivity plateaued or populations grew too large, lords adapted through three recurring strategies:

* Expansion – acquiring new land or resources to maintain surplus value.

* Monetization – leasing labor elsewhere, converting obligation into currency.

* Control of Dependency – ensuring those at the bottom remained structurally tied to the system.

Feudalism did not collapse on its own. It weakened only when demographic shocks, wars, and new frontiers shifted bargaining power back toward labor. Scarcity of workers forced change.

In other words, feudalism ended when people once again became economically valuable.

The Digital Echo of an Old Order

Now consider the present.

Today, ownership of infrastructure, platforms, and capital is increasingly concentrated. Many people do not own their homes outright, their transportation, or even the software tools required to function professionally. Instead, they subscribe. Monthly payments replace property. Access replaces ownership.

Housing is rented. Software is licensed. Entertainment is streamed. Mobility is leased. Even productivity increasingly depends on platforms we do not control.

This is not medieval agriculture. But structurally, it rhymes.

A small group builds and owns the digital “land.” A technical middle class maintains it. The majority participates through continuous payment for access.

The Accelerant: Automation of Cognitive Labor

Artificial intelligence introduces a new dynamic. Unlike past mechanization, which primarily displaced physical labor, modern systems can perform economically useful cognitive tasks, analysis, generation, coordination at dramatically lower cost.

If large segments of human work lose scarcity, the historical mechanism that dismantled feudal systems, valuable labor, may not reappear this time.

Without surplus income, fewer people accumulate capital. Without capital, ownership concentrates further. Dependency deepens, even if living standards remain materially adequate.

A society can become comfortable and constrained at the same time.

A Narrow Path Forward

This trajectory is not inevitable. History never repeats exactly. But it often presents familiar shapes under new names.

We may be approaching a fork between two futures:

* One leads toward a highly centralized, subscription-mediated existence: efficient, stable, and quietly stratified.

* The other toward a world where technological abundance broadens ownership rather than concentrates it.

The difference will not be determined by technology alone, but by how societies choose to distribute its gains.

Somewhere between dystopia and utopia lies a narrow path. Whether we recognize it and choose to walk it remains an open question.

For now, with time to think, it is a question worth asking.

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