Interface intersubjectivities as actors of the digital age

Abstract

In the context of emerging technologies and artificial intelligence developments, the article addresses the problem of the subject. It emphasizes profound transformations in economic relations as well as in the affective and cognitive dimensions of human existence. The subject, understood as multiplicity, is reshaped through interaction with both natural and artificial environments. Within this perspective, the notion of interface intersubjectivity is problematized, whose specific character under the technological shift of recent years appears particularly relevant. The aim of the article is to conceptualize the figure of interface intersubjectivity formed at the intersection of technological innovation and the transformations of contemporary digital capitalism. Methodologically, the study develops the perspective of object-oriented ontology in light of the transition from modern mediations to the digital era of cognitive capitalism. It is argued that the rise of post-industrial information society has altered the very structure of economy and communicative practices. Models of horizontal communities emerge, blurring and destabilizing the boundaries between governance, consumption, and production. This gives rise to a model of cognitive capitalism and digital labor, where information technologies play a decisive role. In such a world, the human is no longer an autonomous subject: as a carrier of data, the individual becomes a decentered and distributed intersubjectivity, actualized in interaction with the other through interfaces. Interfaces thus function as the key channels of economic power in cognitive capitalism. The article concludes that interface intersubjectivity is a dynamic formation that constantly transforms, coexisting with the machinic world in shared processes of information processing, decision-making, and meaning-generation. Consequently, a networked relativization and informational exchange are established through a multiplicity of interfaces that constitute the intersubjectivity of the contemporary (post-)human.