Tech Revolutions & Ads: AI, Innovation, and the Future of Platform Power

This episode closes the thesis by synthesizing the findings and explaining what they mean for the future of AI, both in advertising and beyond. It revisits the core themes and shows why modern production capital behaves differently than in past technological eras. The episode then looks ahead to emerging shifts (agentic AI, new models for content monetization) and ends with a clear takeaway: platf...

This episode presents the core findings of the thesis, drawing on a large qualitative analysis to show how power concentrates in modern advertising technology. It explains how the results are organized across automation, user data, and inventory, and distills them into dominant themes, dependency and differentiation, that have reinforced platform dominance over time. The episode then connects thes...

This episode explains how the research is actually constructed and why the methodology matters. It walks through how the study anchors itself in long-term technological cycles, why it focuses on the modern deployment phase of the internet era, and how production capital drives lasting power in ad tech. It also positions Google, Meta, and Amazon as core examples, explains how automation, user data,...

This episode builds the theoretical foundation of the thesis by walking through key scholarly frameworks in order to better understand AI positioning both within advertising and across the broader economy. It also connects classic innovation theories to modern advertising practices, and explores competing perspectives across technological adoption, data collection, surveillance capitalism, and pla...

This episode sets up the big questions behind this doctoral thesis: how do waves of advertising innovation follow well-established scholarly theories about technological revolutions & financial capital, and what can this history can tell us about where AI is headed next? It lays out the historical backdrop, explains what makes AI different from earlier tech shifts, and makes the case for why a...