Richard Seymour
简介
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, author of Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics, 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.
This is a story about desire and violence, as well as writing. It is also a story about what we might be writing ourselves into, culturally and politically. It is not an authoritative accout: that is impossible this early in the evolution of a radically new technopolitical system. This book is an attempt, as much as anything else, to work out a new langauge for thinking about what is coming into being . . .
在超现实主义艺术家保罗·克利（Paul Klee）的“鸣叫的机器”（The Twittering Machine）中，邪恶机器发出的鸟鸣声就像诱饵，将人类引向诅咒的深渊。著名政治作家和播音员理查德·西摩（Richard Seymour）是《科宾：激进政治的奇怪重生》（Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics）一书的作者，他认为，这是对我们与社交媒体关系的一个令人不寒而栗的隐喻。
前社交媒体高管告诉我们，这个系统是一个上瘾的机器。我们是用户，在点赞、评论和分享的过程中等待下一个热门。我们以个人的身份给机器写信，但它的反应是将我们的幻想、欲望和弱点聚合成数据，并将它们作为一种商品体验返还给我们。通过新闻报道、精神分析以及来自用户、开发者、安全专家和其他人的见解，理查德·西摩（Richard Seymour）探究了机器中人性的一面，问我们能从中得到什么，以及我们将要面对的问题。
这是一个关于欲望和暴力，以及写作的故事。这也是一个关于我们可能在文化上和政治上将自己书写的故事。这不是一份权威的报告：在一个全新的技术政治体系演变的初期，这是不可能的。这本书和其他任何东西一样，都是试图找出一种新的语言来思考正在发生的事情......
