This prologue initiates the volume’s critical inquiry into the technopolitical reconfiguration of democracy and governance in the age of artificial intelligence. Anchored in Richard R. Nelson’s metaphor of “the Moon and the Ghetto,” it foregrounds the structural paradox at the heart of contemporary innovation systems: while vast resources are mobilized toward frontier technologies like AI (the Moon), systemic neglect persists in addressing deep-seated democratic and socio-economic crises (the Ghetto). Tracing this asymmetry, the chapter revisits foundational texts—from John Perry Barlow’s Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace to Echeverría’s Telepolis and the 2015 “Unplugging” essay by Calzada and Cobo—to interrogate the emancipatory promises of digital technologies against their real-world governance consequences. Deploying insights from computational social science and political economy, the chapter deconstructs how AI, automation, and platform capitalism contribute to the erosion of democratic institutions and the emergence of the datafied network state. It asks: Who governs in the age of algorithmic sovereignty? Who benefits from AI economies—and who is excluded? In doing so, the prologue calls for a renewed democratic reckoning and sets the intellectual tone for the volume’s exploration of datafied democracies and AI economics.