MEDIUM IS THE MASTER

"MEDIUM IS THE MASTER" examines how human consciousness has been progressively mechanized from the industrial revolution to the smartphone era. Beginning with Lewis Mumford's insights about the clock as the "key-machine" that abstracted time from natural rhythms, the work traces how each technological shift - from mechanical reproduction through radio and cinema to digital platforms - has restructured human attention and thought patterns. The dissertation argues that we now inhabit an unprecedented "spiral" of technological dependency, where platforms deliberately exploit neuroplasticity and psychological vulnerabilities to capture attention during the most formative period of human development. Drawing on internal Meta documents, neurological research, and the dramatic rise in teen mental health crises between 2010-2015, it reveals how what began as tools for connection have evolved into sophisticated systems for harvesting human consciousness itself.

The work synthesizes media theory from McLuhan and Baudrillard with contemporary neuroscience to demonstrate how the "attention economy" operates through a "capture-sedate-extract" model that treats human awareness as raw material for profit. Rather than offering optimistic solutions, the dissertation adopts a contemplative, mystical tone to examine whether individual agency remains possible against systems specifically engineered to overwhelm conscious choice, ultimately questioning whether the spiral of technological dependency can be consciously redirected or must collapse under its own contradictions before consciousness can return to its center.