The Twittering Machine with Richard Seymour

Event Information

Special guest Richard Seymour is in conversation with Carl about his important book, The Twittering Machine. We feel this is the perfect way to start our second Real Magic Weekend, get yourself out of the house, off your phone and join us all in the shop in real life to discuss how capitalism has stolen our social life.

In surrealist artist Paul Klee’s The Twittering Machine, the bird-song of a diabolical machine acts as bait to lure humankind into a pit of damnation. Leading political writer and broadcaster 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 is a writer and broadcaster from Northern Ireland and the author of numerous books about politics including Against Austerity and Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics. His writing appears in The New York Times, the London Review of Books, the Guardian, Prospect, Jacobin, and innumerable other places including his own Patreon. He is an editor at Salvage magazine.

‘Richard Seymour has a brilliant mind and a compelling style. Everything he writes is worth reading.’ Gary Younge

‘One of our most astute political analysts.’ China Miéville

‘If you really want to set yourself free you should read a book - preferably this one.' Observer, Book of the Week

‘A thrilling demonstration of what [resistance] can look like ... everyone should read it.' Guardian