ABSTRACT
This essay focuses first on the use of information and media to shape political and economic realities in the period after 2008. It explores the media tactics that emerge in the platform era, grouped in particular around the predictive possibilities of digital information. The year 2016 and elections in the US and UK are a particular focus. The second part of the essay explores some of the genealogical threads that shape this history of the prediction and media machines of our present. It draws some broad conclusions about the continuity of strategies and the contingent tactical uses of information and media to shape political and economic realities.
