The Twittering Machine

Written by Richard Seymour

Narrated by Adam Bromley

In artist Paul Klee's The Twittering Machine, the bird-song of a machine acts as bait to lure humankind into a pit of damnation. Leading political writer Richard Seymour argues that this is a chilling metaphor for our relationship with social media. Former social media executives tell us that the system is an addiction-machine. We are users, waiting for our next hit as we like, comment and share. We write to the machine as individuals, but it responds by aggregating our fantasies, desires and frailties into data, and returning them to us as a commodity experience. Through journalism, psychoanalytic reflection and insights from users, developers, security experts and others, Seymour probes the human side of the machine, asking what we're getting out of it, and what we're getting into.

“Richard Seymour has a brilliant mind and a compelling style.” GUARDIAN

“A brilliant, urgent, game-changing intervention.” CHINA MIÉVILLE

• Language: English
• Publisher: W. F. Howes Ltd
• Release date: Nov 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9781528887939

Richard Seymour

Richard Seymour is an emerging voice on the radical left, providing expert analysis on British politics across international media. He co-founded the magazine Salvage, a quarterly of revolutionary arts and letters, and has authored numerous books. He is the author Against Austerity: How we Can Fix the Crisis they Made (Pluto, 2014), Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics (Verso, 2016), Unhitched: The Trial of Christopher Hitchens (Verso, 2013) and The Liberal Defence of Murder (Verso, 2012).