Does Democracy Still Need the Many? Technology, Enclosure and the Evolution of the Citizen

This essay traces the parallel histories of democracy and technology to show how the rise and fall of democratic self-government has tracked a single recurring question: whether a society’s dominant technologies make ordinary people more necessary or less. Drawing on work in the history of information, labor, political economy and surveillance, including Gleick, Lucassen, Mumford, Polanyi, Braverman, Scott, Foucault and Zuboff, it identifies a repeating pattern I call enclosure: a historical moment in which something people once held in common, or used freely in ordinary life, is captured by trade and government and turned into a commodity that can be owned and controlled. Each major technological shift first opens something to the many, spreading power and allowing democracy to rise, and is then followed by an enclosure that concentrates power and pushes democracy back. Four enclosures mark this path, each producing a distinct form of citizen. The enclosure of mind and labor produced the biological citizen. The enclosure of property and goods produced the natural rights citizen. The enclosure of labor and data produced the surveillance citizen. The enclosure of knowledge, now extending to design, engineering and the processes of life itself, is producing the algorithmic citizen. The essay argues that artificial intelligence marks a break in this sequence, because it may allow systems of production, governance and even creation to function without needing the many at all, removing the leverage that has historically compelled power to be shared.