Marketing in the In-Between: A Post-Modern Turn on Madison Avenue

Marketing in the early 21st century is dominated by two approaches, neither of which is visible to the naked eye: the use of data to define and shape human affairs into machine-readable form and the effort to create and sustain ongoing two-way relationships with customers. The former is one way human life is being subjugated to the regime of the machine; the latter is one way the individual may one day emerge from within the datascape. A post-modern perspective is used to reveal both the 'kaleidoroscope' of data and the 'raw immaterials' of relationships in two companion essays.