In their seminal 1944 essay on the Culture Industry, Adorno and Horkheimer argued that standardized mass entertainment, especially cinema and radio, transforms the consciousness of the masses by mimicking the rhythms of factory production, further integrating workers into the capitalist system. Today, the tools of knowledge work also deliver news and entertainment. The smartphone in my pocket is a mobile office, a miniature movie house, a radio, and an encyclopedia. What has changed since mass media evolved into interactive media, given that a few wealthy capitalists still control the forms while monetizing the content? I will argue that the smartphone externalizes human consciousness by plugging affect and perception to a small machine.
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