PRAXIS AND RESISTANCE OF THE COSMOTECHNICS OF LACK: The Metastable Interval of Attention in the Age of Digital Saturation

This paper offers a sociotechnical analysis of contemporary psychological suffering through the lens of attention. It argues that phenomena such as anxiety, burnout, and depression cannot be fully explained by individual or clinical factors alone, but must be understood as effects of a structural conflict between the human need for intervals of indetermination and a dominant cosmotechnical regime oriented toward continuous optimization and saturation. To develop this argument, the paper introduces the concept of the Metastable Interval of Attention (MIA), drawing on Gilbert Simondon’s theory of metastability and Jacques Lacan’s account of lack as the motor of desire. In dialogue with the philosophy of technology (Yuk Hui), critical social theory (Hartmut Rosa; Byung-Chul Han), and embodied cognition, the paper diagnoses three interrelated vectors of saturation—physiological-cognitive, temporal, and semantic—that systematically colonize attentional intervals in digital societies. The paper concludes by proposing the Cosmotechnics of Lack as an alternative ethical-political horizon. Centered on the defense of the Right to the Non-Optimizable Interval, this proposal calls for a reorientation of technological design, institutional practices, and attention economies toward the preservation of indetermination as a condition of subjective freedom, creativity, and democratic life.