Franco "Bifo" Berardi (born 2 November 1949) is an Italian Marxist philosopher, theorist and activist in the autonomist tradition, whose work mainly focuses on the role of the media and information technology within post-industrial capitalism.

Currently he is working with the magazine Derive Approdi as well as teaching social history of communication at the Accademia di belle Arti in Milan.

"[3] Human emotions and embodied communication become increasingly central to the production and consumption patterns that sustain capital flows in post-industrial society, and as such Berardi uses the concepts of "cognitariat" and "info labour" to analyze this psycho-social process.

The primary component of this theory is the depression of the psyche that is caused by the exponentially increasing rate of proliferation of semiotics and symbols in to the cybersphere for the sake of profits.

As remedies Berardi suggests poetry and "chaos"—citing the elegies of Rilke and Guattari's work on chaos—as methods for human subjects to overcome the lived experience of market logic.

Additionally both books cite the work of Deleuze and Guattari, Marx's Fragment on Machines from the Grundrisse, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Wittgenstein, and Symbolic Exchange and Death by Baudrillard.

[10] As remedies, Berardi proposes both a rediscovery of poetic language which speaks directly to humans, and also a redirection of the general intellect—a Marxist term deriving from the Grundrisse, referring to the cognitive capacity of society—away from capitalism and towards social solidarity.

[11][12] Beginning with his own asthma and the death of Eric Garner,[13] he advances the notion that humanity is experiencing a "breathlessness"[14] in all areas of life as a result of being out of sync with contemporary capitalism and technology.

"[16] Berardi criticizes the virtual reality of dating apps (juxtaposed with reports of decreased sexual activity among millennials)[17] and internet forum posts by the American hacker and troll weev[18] as further examples of sickness in society.