Debates about attention are ultimately ontological, not political

Evidence

So when we insist that attention is something more than the movement of the eyes, or a flash or electrical activity in the brain, or several seconds of uninterrupted focus, a different kind of justice is at work. It is not a matter of who runs the world, but a matter of what the world is. Is the world made of money-value? Or is it made of something else? Something that cannot and will not be accounted for in money terms alone? — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 250

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: the attention-movement’s deepest fight is about ontology (what exists) rather than governance (who rules) - a reframing that challenges both tech and regulation discourse.
• XREF: Ontological reframing echoes the Frankfurt School reading of the culture industry as a question of reification and what counts as real.