Free will is a big subject, so I'll skip that one, but regardless, we can't escape our cognitive processes. Each new tech revolution has provided new choices an

Free will is a big subject, so I'll skip that one, but regardless, we can't escape our cognitive processes. Each new tech revolution has provided new choices and exposed systemic exploitation (printing press, translation of the bible, 30 years war). Often the result was the establishment of new forms of exploitation with more complexity and division while at the same time maintaining the previous form or forms of exploitation for as long as they were useful. For me, the larger problem is not the time associated with attention, nor the exploitation of that time, but exploitation itself. Our attention, wills and... are bound by common factors within separate groups of similar cognitive processes. These groups are formed and formative. I'll cut short here, because I don't want to exploit anyone :-), but it is up to us and them and the others to focus on common factors within different cognitive processes, rather then using the divisive factors in different cognitive processes as a form of control. It seems to me that the amount of time spent, the attention time, is less of a problem than the exploitation of that attention time in the sense that the problem of the shadows on the wall remains anyway, and there are always people who will reject the new shadows for the old ones, and people who will use dubious methods to keep one group staring at these shadows and another group staring at those shadows and another... And the collection plate has always existed, and it will always be passed around. Thing is, the shadows don't care, and the flame keepers, they seem, more often than not, to fall in love with their shadows. Time's up.