Attention Economy and Surveillance Capitalism: Technological tools for addiction and manipulation?

The topic of this thesis revolves around the subject of attention, what influences it, its limitation, and to what extent it affects the various steps of communications. To this day, it has been made clear that attention-absorbing abilities are limited. Furthermore, a demonstration has been made of the advance of information over attention, this resulting in the reduction of the already limited attention. This lack of attention triggered a series of passages that resulted in the establishment of a new type of economy named after the phenomena. Most aspects of communication have been influenced by the attention economy, which has deconstructed long-standing practices and methods and rebuilt them to meet the demands of a post-information era. This research examines the factors that appear to lead upon the problem of addiction and manipulation, that companies use in order to degrade productivity and mental health, all this while jeopardizing the development of the workforce of the future: our children.