Power is no longer about occupying territory; it’s about saturating connection. And victory belongs not to the most just, but to the most contagious.

But the subtext is plain: a world built on networks is not one that can be governed by Enlightenment values. Rationality, equality, deliberation, these are ideals of the linear age. The network obeys different laws.

We do not live in a world of things. We live in a world of links. And links generate hierarchies long before institutions do.

This explains why the Internet, marketed as a peer-to-peer utopia, collapsed into six platforms (Google, Amazon, Facebook/META, Apple, X/Twitter and Microsoft). It explains why a supposedly free market gives us Amazon, not... See more