Speech: Digital Serfdom

September 30, 2026

the web, the web! we’re online

i’m talking about the web, not the internet. the web is a tapestry, wormholes of instant communication. imagine the web as a beautiful graph of connections between people, organisation, governments, business. We are connected in cyberspace, you’re connected to the university, there’s a beautiful connection between me and… the unpaid traffic fines in my inbox.

that’s the web. that apps we use, websites, the logos we all know and hate.

of course if I were i’m talking about the internet, which is something else, you’d be hearing about the multi-technology digital internet suite of open specifications, which includes but is not limited to IEEE 802.11 and 802.3 networks (which we know as wifi and ethernet), the internet protocol network layer, Transmission control protocol (or heaven forbid Google’s QUIC protocol which is based on connectionless UDP), and that’s before getting to the application layers like hypertext transfer protocol, domain name system or any of the other secure connection specifications, like transport layer security or secure shells which is used to talk to machines on the other side of the world using only lasers, radio magic and glorified telephone wires. that’s the internet.

i’m talking about the web, man. the web is an idea, information want to be liberated. the web was born in one of the most advanced physics research labs in the world, raised on good vibes and nootropics in sunny silicon valley. It’s now all grown up, pushing forty, and, like a slightly creepy but affable uncle, is ever-present in our lives. We’ve learned to tolerate it, maybe even love it, but, like any normal unhealthy one-sided relationship, we are anxiously attached.

What started out as a tool meant to be leveraged by us has a become a cudgel, knopkierie, to beat us with. I’m here to show you that you don’t use the web, the web is using you. Like tenant-farmers handing over the cream of our crops to digital landlords, cloud-indunas. We are worked tirelessly, around the clock, generating metadata, impressions, clicks, views, hits. Digital oil is being wrung from our eyes and our thumbs, refined in data centres on all five inhabited continents, and, soon, if Elon has his way, in space too.

we know the big players on the web. one of these behemoths is Meta, a name that is disconcertingly self aware. Meta doesn’t just want you ploughing the digital field, they want to plug you straight into the Matrix – the concept of the Metaverse, on which their new name is partly based, is literally straight from a near-future dystopian scifi novel. In protest, I did manage to treat Zuckerberg’s toxic products they way they should, but with mixed results. I looked on from afar at my friends being swallowed in useless group chats and being overfed from the all-you-can-eat instagram reels. I spent a long time off Whatsapp too, the lowest of common denominator on the web these days, until i realised that i bore a legitimate social cost for not having it… you would think that your good friends, close friends, will make an effort to connect with you on other channels, not always the case. i don’t know if they have conspired against me in a secret deal with the zuck, but that’s neither here nor there

Speaking of whatsapp, your smartphone is another “convenience” that has become all but obligatory in this day and age. Try living without one — go on, try. I know I have. Try boarding a flight, try organising a braai, try proving to your bank that you are in fact yourself and not a Nigerian prince with your face and password, try ordering a coffee at the kind of place where the menu is a QR code scratched into the table.

That’s not even touching on what smartphones have done to our attention: I’ve heard the smartphone being labelled as a “Pavlovian circus in your pocket”. imagine telling your great great grandparents that you willingly carry around a machine that allows your every move and close to every thought be tracked and logged, all for someone elses profit. And they have US paying for this thing.

For all the bells and whistles that appeal to our monkey minds, making us think we’re cybernetic-super-organisms, we are still just human. You’re being told that this is the price of modernity – is this the modernity you want? Generations of people getting lonelier, politics getting madder, cell phones getting more expensive and “friends” becoming green bubbles, just waiting to be replaced by tomorrow’s chatbot.

You have a choice. Are you tilling and toiling in someone elses ad farm? For me, there is only one way out: I have to become a digital landlord.