The Modern Metropolis: Digital Culture and the Frankfurt School

摘要

Abstract: In many ways, the virtual, digital spaces created by modern technology such as the smartphone is similar to the industrial cities of the 19th and 20th centuries. The industrial city, for the Frankfurt School, was the center of cultural criticism; here one could be so entrenched in culture as to create valid critique. In this thesis, I will show how the virtual space is analogous to the metropolis, but how it deepens the potential for cultural critique by shifting the perceptual abilities of the subjects. Using the Frankfurt School's arguments on distraction, aesthetics, and subject-object relations, I will demonstrate this enhanced potential, and show how the virtual space can be used for productive critical change.