The Silent Miners and the Tycoons of Mass Reach

The Silent Miners and the Tycoons of Mass Reach are winning.

We used to have three Estates of Power; the Clergy, the Nobility, and the Commoners. This might trans­late to the Legislators, the Capitalists, and the People in today’s terms. 

Later, we now count the news media as the Fourth Estate of Power. 

As we ascend to digit­al-first, the world’s powers are shift­ing; we might need to rethink the idea of only hav­ing four estates of power.

Here goes:

The Fifth Estate: The Silent Miners

Companies like Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google (FAANG) all have one char­ac­ter­ist­ic in common:

They silently mine user data from bil­lions of people.

Roman Emperor Julius Caesar was said to divide and con­quer. The Silent Miners col­lect and sort instead. In the wake of Techlash, this stealthy con­sol­id­a­tion of online power has pro­found implications. 

We, the people, are freely giv­ing away our powers by scrolling past gib­ber­ish Terms of Service dis­claim­ers — only to pay with our atten­tion, integ­rity, and behaviour.

It’s the stat­ist­ic­al Power-Law Distribution; in sys­tems where many are giv­en many choices, a few will be chosen, while most will get to reside in the long tail of the curve.

The Sixth Estate: The Tycoons of Mass Reach

In Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky poin­ted out just how unpre­pared we were as a soci­ety for every­one to have a digit­al voice. 

I would argue that we’re equally unpre­pared for when fam­ous people get unres­tric­ted access to mass reach.

Unlike fam­ous people of the past, people like Kim Kardashian, Donald Trump, Pewdiepie, and Mr Beast have unres­tric­ted access to incom­pre­hens­ible audiences.

Mass media might be dead, but mass reach is alive and kicking.

People with online fame often get no respect from the main­stream media. They’re often char­ac­ter­ised as dim­wit­ted, ridicu­lous, and child­ish. But in the end, it always plays out as one Estate of Power being envi­ous of another.

Despite all the flack and ridicule, the Tycoons of Mass Reach are grow­ing more potent with each upload. And they’re turn­ing into a Sixth Estate of Power by side­lin­ing the Fourth Estate.

And the Internet is turn­ing into an amp­li­fic­a­tion cham­ber for the rich.

We Deserve Better Estates

As the Internet is evolving into a Splinternet, the tec­ton­ic plates of the Internet are shifting.

A dozen mul­tina­tion­al cor­por­a­tions are now min­ing for data and tweak­ing algorithms at their pleas­ure. The divis­ive power of the mass media is being trans­formed into an amp­li­fic­a­tion cham­ber for the fam­ous. Still, more divi­sion of power is rarely a bad thing.

Because I don’t worry about new Estates of Power.
I just think we deserve bet­ter Estates.