Marketing as Control of Human Interfaces and Its Political Exploitation

Abstract

In previous works, I defined ourselves as informational organisms, or inforgs for short, who forage for, produce, cultivate, curate, process, and consume information (Floridi 2013). Yet, we may also be understood as interfaces, who inhabit and interact with, an environment also made up of data and computational processes. By describing ourselves in such terms, this paper argues that we
we can better understand several crucial phenomena that characterise our digital age, including marketing and the “marketisation” of political communication. The article concludes by discussing some of the implications for this in political theory.

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Applied ethics, Inforgs, Marketing, Political theory