The Rulers by Cecilia Rikap
Capitalism's rulers are not abstract entities or shadowy operators. Amazon, Microsoft and Google are the cloud hegemons that subsume the world through the exercise of their intellectual monopolies. Giants like Disney, McDonalds, Nike or Walmart depend on them to use AI for knowledge and value extraction and for disciplining workers. States see some of their core functions sequestered. Innovation is not a free and neutral game, but a hierarchy topped by the rulers.Rikap's new theoretical framework is grounded in a unique trove of 112 interviews at the world's largest firms and data on venture capital, acquisitions, open source, AI conferences and patents. They picture a map of the complexities and political implications of corporate power. In Rikap's counterimage, technology is developed by the people and for the people and the planet through democratic planning.
In The Rulers, Cecilia Rikap delivers a powerful account of how Amazon, Microsoft and Google have become more than the world's largest corporations - they are global economic planners and political actorsBy revealing how Big Tech's control of the cloud and AI value chains enables them to capture knowledge and data across entire production networks, Rikap forces us to rethink what power means in the twenty-first century. Her concept of intellectual monopoly builds on and moves beyond surveillance capitalism or platform economics and exposes the limits of conventional antitrust responses. An essential read for anyone seeking to understand why governing AI and digital infrastructure in the public interest is one of the defining political challenges of our time. -- Mariana Mazzucato, author of The Value of Everything: making and taking in the global economy
The fight to tame big tech is probably the greatest challenge of our age, posing political and economic threats the world has never seen. Cecilia Rikap is one of the most exciting thinkers in this field, and this extensively researched book shows in terrifying detail how companies like Google, whose stated mission is "to organise the world's information," are increasingly able to organise us. -- Nicholas Shaxson, author of The Finance Curse: How Global Finance Is Making Us All Poorer
A searing work that shines a forensic spotlight on the 21st century's Big Tech monopolists. Rikap's analysis and her insider accounts reveal how predatory AI hyperscalers feed on our data and are subverting the nature of knowledge itself. This is a timely, much needed intervention to help consumers and governments understand the distortive, dystopian nature of techno-feudal capitalism. -- Mehreen Khan, economics editor, The Times
The fight to tame big tech is probably the greatest challenge of our age, posing political and economic threats the world has never seen. Cecilia Rikap is one of the most exciting thinkers in this field, and this extensively researched book shows in terrifying detail how companies like Google, whose stated mission is "to organise the world's information," are increasingly able to organise us. -- Nicholas Shaxson, author of The Finance Curse: How Global Finance Is Making Us All Poorer
A searing work that shines a forensic spotlight on the 21st century's Big Tech monopolists. Rikap's analysis and her insider accounts reveal how predatory AI hyperscalers feed on our data and are subverting the nature of knowledge itself. This is a timely, much needed intervention to help consumers and governments understand the distortive, dystopian nature of techno-feudal capitalism. -- Mehreen Khan, economics editor, The Times
Cecilia Rikap is an Associate Professor in Economics and Head of Research at the University College London's Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. She is also a tenure researcher of the CONICET, Argentina's national research council, and associate researcher at COSTECH lab, Université de Technologie de Compiègne. She is the author of Capitalism, Power and Innovation: Intellectual Monopoly Capitalism Uncovered (Routledge), which recently won the EAEPE Joan Robinson Prize Competition, and The Digital Innovation Race: Conceptualizing the Emerging New World Order (Palgrave), the latter co-authored with B.A.K. Lundvall.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781804297346 |
| ISBN 10 | 1804297348 |
| Title | The Rulers |
| Author | Cecilia Rikap |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Verso Books |
| Year published | 2026-08-04 |
| Number of pages | 256 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |