This paper critically analyses the "attention economy" within the framework of cognitive science and techno-political economics, as applied to both human and machine interactions. We explore how current business models, particularly in digital platform capitalism, harness user engagement by strategically shaping attentional patterns. These platforms utilize advanced AI and massive data analytics to enhance user engagement, creating a cycle of attention capture and data extraction. We review contemporary (neuro)cognitive theories of attention and platform engagement design techniques and criticize classical cognitivist and behaviourist theories for their inadequacies in addressing the potential harms of such engagement on user autonomy and wellbeing. 4E approaches to cognitive science, instead, emphasizing the embodied, extended, enactive, and ecological aspects of cognition, offer us an intrinsic normative standpoint and a more integrated understanding of how attentional patterns are actively constituted by adaptive digital environments. By examining the precarious nature of habit formation in digital contexts, we reveal the techno-economic underpinnings that threaten personal autonomy by disaggregating habits away from the individual, into an AI managed collection of behavioural patterns. Our current predicament suggests the necessity of a paradigm shift towards an ecology of attention. This shift aims to foster environments that respect and preserve human cognitive and social capacities, countering the exploitative tendencies of cognitive capitalism.

What would you describe as intelligence; memorising notes for exams only to forget about them in the summer, or making funny jokes on the fly on seemingly any topic? How about a magician who performs strictly on a script or a magician who changes the routine ever so slightly depending on the audience? This isn't a case for who is'more intelligent', but rather, when something is an act of intelligence. Intelligence is a widely used term ("So and so is highly intelligent", "emotional intelligence", "artificial intelligence" etc.) across many aspects of life. It's often associated with the ability to learn and process information quickly, broadly or deeply.

Some people are fearful the coming revolution in AI and robotics will take people's jobs. Satya Nadella sees a way forward. Speaking at the Nov. 18 MIT AI and Work of the Future Congress, the Microsoft CEO envisioned a near future where jobs are "enriched by productivity." "Computing is getting embedded in the real world, in a manufacturing plant, in a retail setting, in a hospital, in a farm," Nadella said. "Now we're transcending beyond knowledge work to help people who are on the construction site, in care management in hospitals, on manufacturing shop floors, to all participate in being able to do digitized work. And obviously, hopefully the wages go up."

In the more advanced consumer goods and services economies, the personal data of billions of people is the most precious of all digital fuels. An entire industry is emerging around the concept that data is the most precious asset in any enterprise, in any industry. Economists are working to determine how to value personal data. Its immense value is reflected in the soaring stock values and astronomical cash flows and profits of companies that monopolize and leverage data. Personal data is a uniquely magical economic asset.

In moments of digital anxiety I find myself thinking of my father's desk. Dad was a travelling furniture salesman in the 1980s, a job that served him well in the years before globalisation hobbled the Canadian manufacturing sector. He was out on the road a lot, but when he worked from home he sat in his office, a small windowless study dominated by a large teak desk. And yet every day Dad spent hours there, making notes, smoking Craven "A"s, drinking coffee and yakking affably to small-town retailers about shipments of sectional sofas and dinette sets. This is what I find so amazing.