E006 - The Hidden Curriculum of Dark Flow: How Big Tech Rewired Our Attention for Its Own Ends with Jac Mullen

We’re told our attention crisis is quite simple: too many notifications, too much screen time, too many distractions. Delete the apps. Do a digital detox. Problem solved. But what if the real story is far stranger—and more disturbing?In this episode, I talk with Jac Mullen, a writer, educator, and attention theorist who helped create the Strother School of Radical Attention, where he’s now faculty. For over a decade, he’s been engaged in what he calls “attention activism”—working to understand and resist how tech companies have fundamentally changed the way our minds work. Jac also teaches English at a public high school in New Haven, where he’s witnessed firsthand how digital interfaces are rewiring young minds.Here’s what makes Jac’s perspective so unsettling: He argues that our devices aren’t stealing our attention—they’re teaching us entirely new ways of attending to reality. Ways that serve corporate profit, not human flourishing. Through what he calls “dark flow”—a zombie-like state of dissociative absorption—tech companies have essentially seized control of how children’s minds are formed, turning attention itself into a means of production.Jac and I dig into how surveillance capitalism transformed kids into data laborers, why simply blocking digital distractions won’t restore our natural attention, and what happened when his school finally banned phones this year after years of classroom chaos. We explore the two key design mechanisms that trap us in low-agency states—frictionless automation and variable reward schedules—why attention is more like moldable clay than a depleting battery, and how different cultures shape fundamentally different styles of attention.This conversation pulls back the curtain on something most of us sense but can’t quite name—that deeper transformation happening beneath all the surface-level distraction. Jac reveals the hidden curriculum our devices have been teaching all along, and why our kids seem to inhabit not just a different digital world, but an entirely different cognitive universe.*** LINKS ***Jac’s website: jacmullen.netJac’s Substack: After LiteracyStrother School of Radical Attention website: schoolofattention.orgTyler’s website: attentioneering.co This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit attentioneering.substack.com

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