State of Big Tech 2022: Dismantling Digital Enclosures

We invite you to delve into the first edition of our State of Big Tech Compendium. Envisioned as an evolving, year-on-year endeavor that will track and unpack the developments in the Big Tech space, the debut edition of this powerful volume of essays brings together important perspectives on the corporatization of digital technologies from across regions and constituencies.

The essays in this edition look at how this dynamic is unfolding across a wide range of contexts: from the integration of AI into education, to the digital capture of our food systems; from Big Tech’s attempts to monopolize research and innovation networks, to their trojan-horse proposals for instituting their power in multilateral spaces. Through diverse cases and illustrations, our many authors champion a basic set of concerns, exploring the machinations of private power, the short-comings of current regulatory frameworks, attempts at popular mobilization, and bold visions for alternative digital futures.

The State of Big Tech seeks to contribute a vision and blueprint for national and global pathways to reclaim society and economy for the 99%, providing a scorecard of tech corporations’ misdeeds, and a constructive and critical cartography of policy and political action based on what is not working.

Essays