The Corporate Age was an almost 200 year long period starting in the mid 21st century, when the corporate sector managed, through vast lobbying efforts, influencing politicians and lawsuits, to completely supplant conventional governments, leaving said governments almost powerless. Laws meant to limit the power of the corporations were removed, while laws that helped them gain more power were added to the law codes.
For example, patents, copyright and trademarks were extended for an unlimited amount of time during the Corporate Age, allowing corporations to either crush an opposing company with their patents, or sell licenses. Corporate ‘wars’ were limited to lawsuits and other legal and semi-legal methods, as it was generally accepted that employing large groups of corporate mercenaries was counterproductive to gaining profits. Corporate espionage and counter espionage however bloomed throughout the Corporate Age.
The End of History
The Corporate Age also brought with it a time frame later called ‘The End of History’, a trend that had started even before the Corporate Age.
During the early to mid 21st century, more and more information, data and books were moved to be stored digitally, while less and less physical data were created. Additionally, events such as fires, natural disasters, and simple decay lead to the loss of the physical media. In the case of physically stored digital media, formats changed, technologies changed, and incompatibilities lead to an effective loss of access to the media.
In other places, random middle management decided to remove or delete data that had not been accessed over a longer time frame, both to free up storage space, save money to buy more storage space, or in some cases forgot to back up data to new storage solutions. In some cases, information was deliberately destroyed or obfuscated, like in the case of the Anthroid Virus.
As such, access to history and culture was slowly lost, to be replaced by a version of history and culture controlled by the corporations.
End of the Corporate Age
While the corporations ruled, they inadvertently created their own downfall. To most corporations, it was seen as advantageous to save money by controlling less government and so they worked to combine more and more of the governments under their control into a single government, simply called ‘The State’.
The State was created to be a neo-liberal democracy with only a limited electorate, made up of people above a certain wage limit, with mainly corporate shills elected into the bi-cameral parliament, and with a technically powerless prime minister at its head.
But while the corporations believed to control The State, history and culture, it was the Cortical Stacks and Indentured Servants that lead to the renewal of actual governmental power within The State, which lead to the end of the Corporate Age. To save money within The State, the vast majority of civil servants were made up of Indentures Servants that did not need to be paid a wage and could be housed in large dormitories.
This however gave those civil indentured servants a possibility to gather power, as they looked into old governmental data bases and libraries that had been retained. This in turn led to cooperation across the governmental structure of The State as the civil servants were trained and indoctrinated to see themselves as bound to the state and the public good, something the corporations were not. Coordinated small scale efforts were made by these civil servants over decades to curtail corporate power within the government of The State. With their focus on shorter term gains, the corporations did not see it coming and by the mid 23rd century, The State had regained control over government and society.
This created a more socially minded society that placed Indentured Servants on a relatively high societal level.
Some Effects of the Corporate Age
At their height, corporations tried to turn everything into profit generating ventures, and with their control over culture, this led to the removal of taboos in place in pre-corporate age cultures.
For example, sex was turned from a private and in some places taboo event into something no one thinks about twice. What used to be called LGBTQ+ rights turned into a non issue, as freedom of sexual expression was considered profitable and the moral outlook, if it could be called that, changed in those regards. Fetishes and kinks were subjected to the same shift in moral outlook, and it became normal to indulge in most fetishes and kinks.
As such, public sex, displays of affection, or shows of ones fetish are not considered morally objectionable, but part of everyday life.