Information is structurally prevented from becoming genuine thought

Evidence

However useful it might be from a practical point of view to have as much information as possible at one’s disposal, there still prevails the iron law that the information in question shall never touch the essential, shall never degenerate into thought. This is ensured by the restriction of information to what the monopoly has supplied, to commodities, or to those people whose function in the business world has turned them into commodities. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 126

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that monopoly-restricted information is engineered to never ‘degenerate into thought’ is a dense mechanism worth sitting with — it redefines the very thing information culture claims to provide.
• XREF: connects to: Half-education reduces thought to commodity facts, defeating self-examination against paranoia — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 157; Information can produce, bypass, or actively destroy meaning — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 266; Empiricism’s atomism prevents followers from connecting facts into political conclusions — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 12 (+3 more)