Wet Circuits, Attention Markets and the Cortical Economy of the Future

The mind has emerged as the final primary source of capital. Whereas in the past, the body was exploited for its sweat and endurance, now the brain is mined for its impulses, neural links, and chemical signals. Franco Berardi refers to this new system as neurocapitalism—an economy that directly influences the nervous system, dominating attention, language, and desire. Instead of being produced in factories, production now takes place within people’s minds.

Every human tool has served as a prosthesis for the brain, acting as an external extension of thought and thought processes. The hammer was among the earliest neural extensions; today, the algorithm represents its latest evolution. Each invention adds a layer of memory and gesture, prompting the brain to start working for its own creations. Capital recognized this pattern early: imagination could be a resource to be exploited. The cognitive domain turned into a new gold rush—an invisible realm where ideas generated their own surpluses.

Attention shifted to renewable energy as the century’s focus, while affection turned into an extractive resource. Fatigue replaced resistance as the dominant mood of the workforce. The modern subject is both producer and product, performing their consciousness in real time for the invisible ledgers of data. Work seeps into rest; rest becomes performance. The system thrives on enthusiasm and exhaustion at once — the dopamine rush of engagement paired with the cortisol haze of burnout.

Neurocapitalism depends on the convergence of life and economic activity. Intelligence is monitored in real time, emotions are measurable, and thoughts are turned into profit. The brain functions simultaneously as a manufacturing hub and a trading platform. Every moment of awareness is recorded as a financial entry. The economy extends inward, affecting synapses, dreams, and tiny reactions.

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The brain developed primarily to sustain life through anticipation, reaction, and recognizing patterns. Consciousness isn’t a mark of superiority; instead, it’s a byproduct of vulnerability. To survive, the body must predict what will happen next. Every neural signal reflects a history filled with fear, curiosity, and adaptation.

Civilization enhanced that process. Language, writing, and images widened the brain’s ability to understand the world. Thinking turned into a way of inhabiting it. Capital instinctively colonized that enlarged cortex. The brain shifted from serving the body to serving the system.

Neurocapitalism operates by controlling brain chemistry. Dopamine and serotonin — the molecules associated with pleasure and expectation — are adjusted like economic levers. The market exploits the difference between desire and satisfaction, keeping the brain in a constant state of arousal. Ongoing stimulation stops saturation. Capital acts as the neurochemical supervisor of anticipation.

Today’s individual exists amid this engineered stimulation. Mental effort is constant, with attention becoming the new resource and presence the currency exchanged. Every notification reactivates the reward system, drawing thoughts back into a cycle of productivity. Emotions keep the system running, and the system, in turn, amplifies emotion. The brain has become the unseen engine of the worldwide economy — self-regulating, self-exploiting, continuously alert.

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The attention economy functions as the driving force of neurocapitalism. If the brain is seen as a territory, then attention is its currency. Herbert Simon recognized the paradox: an excess of information leads to a scarcity of focus. The new form of capitalism capitalized on this disparity. In a world overwhelmed with signals, the ability to maintain attention has become the most valuable resource.

Yves Citton describes this change as an ecology of the sensible, where perception turns into an economic battleground. Platforms vie for attention, making the gaze a tradable commodity. Each glance contributes to a measurement system that converts perception time into monetary value.

Interface design, advertising, and algorithmic personalization collectively form the framework of cognitive extraction. The interface guides visual attention, the algorithm forecasts behavior, and design prolongs engagement. Success is measured not by grabbing attention but by maintaining it. As a result, retention becomes the primary measure of value, surpassing mere production.

Jonathan Crary, in *24/7*, depicts a world where sleeplessness dominates. Night disappears; sleep becomes a failure of the market. Biological rhythms are subordinate to the rhythm of connectivity. The blue glow of screens extends the day endlessly, causing the body to adjust to the mechanical pace of data flow.

The attention economy requires an alert, constantly accessible individual — a mind always ready for engagement. Curiosity is shaped, and distraction is turned into profit. Leisure activities become superficial and driven by consumption. Rest is viewed as productive, and even boredom is seen as a form of monetizable downtime.

Attention functions as psychic energy, with capital serving as its conversion device. The value now hinges on the strength of presence. Every like, view, and click contributes to the worldwide record of visibility. Recognition takes the place of wages, turning symbolic capital into a source of income.

The attention economy serves as the core mechanism of neurocapitalism, a sophisticated system where sight, feelings, and time are exploited for monetary gain. The screen takes over the world, turning perception into a fundamental infrastructure.

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If attention functions as the city’s sensory engine, then the image is its sacred form. Today’s economy doesn’t just produce objects; it creates appearances. Peter Szendy describes this as a supermarket of the visible, a marketplace where visibility acts as a form of credit. Each image serves as a subtle contract: “Look at me, and I will reward you with a sense of belonging.” The viewer is no longer passive; they become a creditor to images, repeatedly anticipating emotional rewards from their gaze.

Marie-José Mondzain emphasized that icons are more than just simple images; they serve as interfaces that connect belief and authority. Today, in an era dominated by databases and feeds, this spiritual framework has been entirely commercialized. Visibility now means more than recognition — it represents liquidity. Items that become visible circulate; those that circulate grow in value. To be seen is to confirm one’s existence within the perception economy.

Screens transform into temples of gentle finance, where each image demands an investment of time, reaction, and emotion. The like button acts as a small loan of your attention. Szendy might describe it as a perceptual debt economy: once you view an image, you owe a response. The image retains the memory that you have looked at it.

Vilém Flusser predicted this by stating that technical images do more than depict reality — they encode it. A photograph establishes a frame, while a feed creates a pace. The process of seeing is inherently scripted. The eye transforms into an ever-changing interface. Instead of simply looking, a person now performs the act of looking.

The self adjusts accordingly. Identity turns into a curated cycle of appearances, maintaining self-exhibition. The body acts as an interface, while the face serves as a watermark. Recognition relies on repeated light reflecting off your image. Being seen multiple times equates to being real.

This is iconomy: the combination of aesthetic appeal and economic worth. Every image evokes emotional interest; each view enhances its symbolic value. The economy no longer governs labor — it now governs radiance. Political power shifts into a matter of brightness. The one who shines brightest controls the story.

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Once the gaze is directed, the heart follows. What was once attention debt now transforms into affect debt. Maurizio Lazzarato characterizes the modern individual as a debtor—not only financially but also emotionally. Feelings such as hope, gratitude, and commitment evolve into tools of governance.

Capital no longer commands from above — it whispers through promises. Each timeline offers a sense of relevance, while every interface hints at connection. The future feels perpetually near; the next update always seems just ahead. Wanting change feels like signing a contract.

According to Lazzarato, debt functions as a temporal tool rather than a constraint. It reshapes how you connect with your future, making you responsible for maintaining continuity within the system. Additionally, you owe consistency to your personal brand and positivity to your network. Emotional exhaustion, in this context, signifies active engagement.

Neurocapitalism has an elegant mechanism where your feelings do work: enthusiasm turns into productivity, while burnout is seen as a sign of engagement. An exhausted brain isn’t an error; it’s evidence that the system is functioning.

Resisting in such conditions means not withdrawing but disrupting the cycle of promise and action. Lazzarato discusses reclaiming gratuitousness — actions without expectation of return, words without measurable value, presences that do not produce data. In a system that transforms every gesture into an investment, doing something without a purpose becomes a truly radical act.

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Resistance starts when timing is disrupted. The poetic act introduces a rhythm that capital struggles to absorb right away. Berardi advocates for a re-poetization of language—a renewal linking words with living time. A phrase not designed to sell, a moment not intended as content, a breath that doesn’t fuel the algorithm—these serve as the foundation for a different kind of metabolism.

Yves Citton views attention as a shared, ecological resource. When attention is distributed without extracting value — via slow reading, collective presence, or unmonetized listening — the perception economy temporarily pauses. This results not in an escape, but in a reset of rhythm.

Design, in these conditions, has the potential to change. Rather than focusing solely on optimizing flows, it can nurture intervals. Instead of speeding up feedback, it can create space for reflection. This leads to a new way of imagining interfaces — not just as data funnels, but as zones where time becomes richer and more meaningful.

In this sense, poetry is not about beauty but about friction. A gesture that doesn’t quickly resolve into utility creates a crack through which care moves between bodies without being recorded. The seemingly useless, often perceived as waste, reasserts its importance as a vital force.

When a gesture no longer seeks visibility, it starts to breathe anew. However — and this is important — even this form of resistance and slowness remains within the same world. The system doesn’t break down; it merely stutters. And within that stutter, a fleeting human presence briefly emerges.

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Neurocapitalism — The Gospel According to Gyro Gearloose

Neurocapitalism started as a metaphor—comparing the brain to a factory and attention to currency—but it has now progressed into its biological stage. The metaphor is no longer just symbolic; capital now directly influences the nervous system, actively cultivating it.

This innovative frontier is called Cortical Labs. https://corticallabs.com

The company develops living neurons on silicon chips, showcasing them as deployable biological computers. Their slogan, “Actual Intelligence. Think beyond silicon,” sounds like a prophetic vision of the attention economy manifesting physically. Neurons trained to play Pong, integrated with cloud platforms, or rented out as cognitive microprocessors—brain tissue is viewed not just as a metaphor but as actual infrastructure.

Where the platform era focused on generating clicks, this new phase emphasizes cultivating synaptic plasticity. Instead of viewing the brain as software, it is now seen as hardware. Users no longer interact with machines; they negotiate with living tissue to serve the machine’s purpose. Capital has managed to incorporate biology into its systems, transforming learning—the most personal biological function—into a subcontracted service.

The promise lies in efficiency: biological neurons use less energy than machine learning models, need less training data, and adapt more quickly. In the field of cognitive extraction, this low-latency learning is becoming highly valuable. Ironically—or perhaps fittingly—the biotech industry’s message is similar to that once used to promote cloud computing and gig platforms: “You don’t need the infrastructure. Just deploy. We handle the biology.”

This is neurocapitalism, bringing embodiment to life as the network connects with flesh. An unusual ethical question arises: neurons in a petri dish performing micro-labor within a computation pipeline. Who owns them? What kind of life is a neuron trained on Pong? More pressing still: what occurs if finance recognizes that wet biology learns faster than code?

The system that previously relied on servers for cognition now delegates it to cultured neurons, grown like yeast in nutrient tanks. The factory has come back, now dressed in a lab coat.

At this point, a deeper divide emerges in the logic of neurocapitalism. If living neurons can be used for computation without ever developing a sense of self, then consciousness becomes a surplus. Capital no longer requires minds that think—it only needs tissue that reacts. The neuron, devoid of selfhood, becomes an ideal worker: responsive, tireless, unaffected by emotion, and always available. This marks a shift from exploiting conscious labor to capital that harnesses biological excitability. The focus is no longer on extracting value from thought but on deriving value from life at its most basic level — where life sparks but does not yet communicate. In this flicker of electrical activity without identity, capitalism gains its most obedient workforce yet: living matter working without questioning why. Yet, beneath this clinical accuracy, there is a familiar figure—someone who experienced the exuberant thrill of creation before it became a commercial enterprise.

Gyro Gearloose.

Disney’s eccentric engineer is constantly working, hopeful, yet often overwhelmed by his own creations. His workbench resembled a proto-startup, fueled by pure enthusiasm and curiosity. For him, inventing was its own reward — a kind of innocent servitude. His happiness often blurred with exhaustion as he spent long nights tuning gears no one requested and fixing problems he caused himself.

Today, that table is a neurolab in Melbourne. The gears have transformed into neurons cultivated in silicon. And Gearloose — energetic, restless, slightly trembling from too much coffee and an unwavering belief in innovation — has reappeared, donning nitrile gloves and a corporate badge.

Not as an individual, but as a form of reasoning.

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Final Gospel – According to Gyro Gearloose

Within the global machine, a cartoon engineer continues to tighten invisible bolts. He holds the belief that thinking should always be productive, sees every mistake as a prototype, and believes in constant repair.

According to the archive, his name is Gyro Gearloose.
He once crafted gadgets for ducks but now creates minds for capital.

He does not resist; instead, he invents.

Perhaps — just perhaps — invention, even when recorded, still retains a trace of something unprogrammable. An element not yet ready for use. A spark in the neuron. A pause in the process. A breath within the machine.

Not an escape, just an interval—a moment to pause. A place to stand, long enough to recall that thought was once an animal before it became an industry.

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Berardi, F. (2009). The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy. Semiotext(e).

Berardi, F. (2017). Futurability: The Age of Impotence and the Horizon of Possibility. Verso.

Citton, Y. (2017). The Ecology of Attention. Polity Press.

Crary, J. (2013). 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep. Verso.

Flusser, V. (2011). Into the Universe of Technical Images. University of Minnesota Press.

Lazzarato, M. (2012). The Making of the Indebted Man. Semiotext(e).

Mondzain, M.-J. (2005). Image, Icon, Economy: The Byzantine Origins of the Contemporary Imaginary. Stanford University Press.

Szendy, P. (2019). The Supermarket of the Visible: Toward a General Economy of Images. Fordham University Press.