Abstract
In the contemporary so-called information society, which is fi rst and foremost a capitalist society, information and information-artifacts are increasingly commodified; a development that serves the interest of powerful elites. A central problem in the capitalist information society, both on a societal and an individual level, is the phenomenon of information overload. As the problem of information overload becomes acute, its dialectic relation to the concept of information society is revealed . Horkheimer and Adorno’s thoughts about the mechanisms of the culture industry, it’s role in the structures of late capitalism, the interplay between the culture industry and the subject, as well as the individual’s and collective’s agency offer us interesting insights when addressing the capitalist information society and the phenomenon of information overload
Conclusion
The Culture Industry is by all means a gloomy text, which was written in dark times (Peters, 2003). During the past 70 years, the text was discussed and criticized in many contexts: “To write a history of the reception of these 50-odd pages would be, in a sense, to write the history of critical media studies” (Peters, 2003, p. 58). This chapter has not sought to present a thorough analysis or discussion of The Culture Industry’s reception, but rather to apply the text’s structural analysis and criticism of the culture industry’s role in late capitalism to contemporary capitalist information society and its relation to the phenomenon of information overload. The striking similarities, as well as some key differences, are a further proof that the so-called information society is, nonetheless, a capitalist one, while acknowledging the profound changes and developments that give it the character of a capitalist information society. From my perspective, resistance to information overload is in many situations an act of resistance to (transnational informational) capitalism itself. It is vital.