As I was reading Capital is Dead by McKenzie Wark during lockdown making these brain harvesting devices became a way to play around with some of the ideas in it.
“Industrial capitalism was not terribly interested in workers who think and feel. It wanted hands. It wanted muscle. It was a flesh-eating machine. Whatever disgusting and terrifying power lurks in these more recent stories does not so much eat bodies as brains. This combinatory works two ways: either your mind is erased and your body is another mind's vehicle; or your mind is subordinated to the will of another power.”