Netocracy was a term invented by the editorial board of the American technology magazine Wired in the early 1990s. A portmanteau of internet and aristocracy, netocracy refers to a perceived global upper-class that bases its power on a technological advantage and networking skills, in comparison to what is portrayed as a bourgeoisie of a gradually diminishing importance.

The concept was later picked up by the Swedish philosophers Alexander Bard and Jan Söderqvist for their book Netocracy — The New Power Elite and Life After Capitalism (originally published in Swedish in 2000, published in English by Reuters/Pearsall UK in 2002).

The netocracy concept has been compared with Richard Florida's concept of the creative class. Bard and Söderqvist have also defined an under-class in opposition to the netocracy, which they refer to as the consumtariat.

The word is also used as a portmanteau of Internet and democracy, not of Internet and aristocracy:

Jan Söderqvist, born 1961, is an author, lecturer, writer and consultant, and among other things also working as a literary and film critic for the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. He has written the books Nätokraterna (published in English in 2003 as Netocracy: The New Power Elite & Life After Capitalism, as well as in 14 further languages), a second book titled Det globala imperiet (currently in translation to English as The Global Empire^{[citation needed]}) and a third book titled Kroppsmaskinerna (originally published in 2009, currently in translation to English as The Body Machines^{[citation needed]}) together with Alexander Bard, in which they present a philosophical vision for a global society following the interactive revolution.

Söderqvist is known as a critic of laws about Prostitution in Sweden and is one of the 15 founders of the Liberal Democratic Party of Sweden.