Isn't the cold, heedless authority a trope of fiction? Doesn't it signify, "the authoritarian power that everyone agrees is bad, so can be used as a villain without offending anyone?"
Isn't that a trope of future dystopian Sci-fi? The cold, heartless, amoral mega-corporation, uninterested in any individual's plight, only in efficiency?
We no longer own our entertainment purchases. We no longer hold the data. We no longer own our communications with our friends, relatives, and coworkers. The very fabric of our relationships and our most intimate and valued expressions is now wholly contained on the servers of mega-corporations, to be traded and sold to other corporations, to be mined for information for profit.
Medieval peasants no longer owned the land they worked. There was another level of status in medieval England, the villein: a feudal tenant entirely subject to a lord or manor to whom he paid dues and services in return for land. The villein didn't own his land. He was a chattel accessory to the land.
Isn't that a trope of future dystopian Sci-fi? The cold, heartless, amoral mega-corporation, uninterested in any individual's plight, only in efficiency?
We no longer own our entertainment purchases. We no longer hold the data. We no longer own our communications with our friends, relatives, and coworkers. The very fabric of our relationships and our most intimate and valued expressions is now wholly contained on the servers of mega-corporations, to be traded and sold to other corporations, to be mined for information for profit.
Medieval peasants no longer owned the land they worked. There was another level of status in medieval England, the villein: a feudal tenant entirely subject to a lord or manor to whom he paid dues and services in return for land. The villein didn't own his land. He was a chattel accessory to the land.