Introduction. The article is devoted to the study of the phenomenon of the culture of control in conditions of mediatization – an integral part of the modern social world of the city. The specificity of the view on the problem lies in the departure from the functional technicality of positivist research into the field of ontological and social reflection, expanding the analytical range of revealing the meaning. In the multimedia environment of the city, rapid orientation without special selective criteria resulting from expectation, search for certain objects, or intent to act requires a broad rather than a focus strategy of forms and methods of control. Theoretical analysis. A horizon of understanding control as a not completely reduced to the coercive and punitive functions formal process, but a culturally mediated phenomenon is proposed. The procedure for considering attention as an intentional act, or event, as a resource of culture and a source of spiritual work for constituting the meanings of human reality is singled out. In the spiritual and anthropological context, it is shown that attention is not only an orienting reflex, but an internal basis that is not associated with observation strategies in the form of mechanical external perception. The value of attention is determined by its maximally dense expedient concentration, which makes it possible to overcome states of lack of control and absent-mindedness. Conclusion. It has been established that the culture of control is a specific mental device that has the ability to capture the associative adjacency and mutual connection of things which are even distant from each other. Being an effective “screed” of intuitively grasped and reflected forms of meaning, it provides the basis for understanding everything that was personally perceived in its essence and completeness.