In an age increasingly shaped by ephemeral digital interactions, we are confronted with a pervasive sense of detachment from the tangible—a world where “non-things” dominate and our lived experiences are reduced to data points, endlessly catalogued and commodified. Each CAPTCHA we solve, each click or scroll, propels a shadow economy of meaninglessness, where we contribute to datasets that reframe not only our identities but our entire reality. As Byung-Chul Han argues, these digital non-things do not enrich our lives but instead strip them of substance, removing us from spaces of authentic connection and grounding us instead in a ceaseless feedback loop of information.

The promises of AI—that it cannot supplant the irreplaceable complexity of human experience—exist only to perpetuate a neoliberal marketplace ruled by predictive algorithms, ads, and virtual detours, amplifying a reality that is perpetually detached and commodified. In Han’s view, this transformation is a descent into an “information hell,” where our world is less something to live within than a stream of data in which we float, surveilled and redirected as mere profiles within a vast network.

Our attention, fractured and reprogrammed by this continuous digital engagement, is guided less by conscious choice than by the demands of a media landscape that is, in Han’s terms, an endless archive of consumable moments. Authentic experience—a moment of contemplation, a connection untouched by commercial motivations—has been hollowed out. The tactile has given way to the virtual, where we encounter not true things but interfaces, not meaning but metrics.

In a mediascape where all content is calibrated for maximum engagement, we must cultivate resistance. This resistance lies in our ability to reject the constant demands of algorithmic interaction, to reclaim spaces of silence and depth that are deliberately disconnected from commodification. To sever ourselves from this engineered information economy is to assert our humanity against the prevailing “non-things” and to open up the possibility of experience unfiltered by data-driven directives. This act of reclamation, however minor, is the first step toward a reality not shaped by metrics but by the intangible qualities that define human life.