Jenna Burrell and Marion Fourcade describe an emerging split between what they call the “coding elite” — those who build and control algorithmic systems — and the “cybertariat” — those who are subject to them.
This isn’t just a digital divide in the old sense of who has internet access. It’s a divide in who gets to be a subject versus an object in algorithmic systems. The coding elite set the parameters. Everyone else is a data point.
Vassilis Charitsis and Mikko Laamanen have pushed this further, arguing that algorithmic sorting doesn’t merely reflect existing class positions — it actively constitutes new ones. When a platform decides what content you see, what prices you’re shown, what jobs appear in your feed, and what credit you qualify for, it isn’t just responding to your class position. It is producing it.
This is the caste mechanism at work. Not a single decree from above, but a thousand small algorithmic decisions that cumulatively construct your social position. And because each decision is automated, distributed, and opaque, the resulting hierarchy appears natural — as if it simply reflects “the data.”
This is an excerpt from “The Digital Caste: Surveillance Capitalism and the Architecture of Permanent Inequality” — read the full essay at michaeljoelhall.com.