How to deal with Big Tech power? The “Big Tech Raj”, a new form of biopower in the digital age

Abstract

Big Tech has profoundly reconfigured societies. With their size, financial power, logics of data extraction and accumulation, social influence, geopolitical role, and accomplishments of state missions, Big Tech firms have quickly gained a reputation as “new digital governments.” However, academic research (notably platform, innovation, and information systems research) is rather uncritical of Big Tech's power. In this conceptual paper, we problematize the nature, meaning, and implications of Big Tech's power by proposing an integrative framework on “biopower” (rooted in “pastoral power,” biopower refers to the subtle and pervasive regulation of life in modern societies). Drawing from Foucault's work, we argue that Big Tech firms produce a new form of biopower in the digital era by virtue of their material configurations (constituted by technology, such as applications, algorithms, AI systems), which create conditions for steering people's conduct. We use the “raj” metaphor (we refer to the ruling power exercised by the British East India Company in 17th century) to characterize Big Tech's power, which we describe as the “Big Tech Raj,” thus detailing the significant evolutions, extensions, and sophistication in the target, scope, relationships, and purpose of classic pastoral power. We discuss the implications of this power (in terms of possible resistance and counter-conducts) and call for more scholarly attention to them.