Hungry Ghosts in the Machine - by Mike Watson (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Hungry Ghosts in the Machine: Digital Capitalism and the Search for Self examines the ways in which social and other digital media utilize nostalgia to heighten anxiety, depression and alienation while offering fleeting cures which only ultimately lead to a cycle of longing and, at most, only temporary satiation. It is argued that wellbeing and spiritual practice freed of the compulsive aspect of social media use might form a useful role in a wider socialist movement. Digital era addiction, psychedelics, AI and memes meet Adorno, Deleuze, Fisher, Maté, Roderick, Sontag, Zizek, The Beatles and Metallica in Watson's characteristically cornucopian dive into the ills of 21st century living and dying.

Review Quotes

On the author: '... if Srnicek is the best Marxist thinker of the data economy, Watson is-dare I say it?-the best Marxist thinker of the culture of data.' - Conrad Hamilton (Postdoctoral Research Fellow at East China Normal University and co-author of Myth and Mayhem: A Leftist Critique of Jordan Peterson and author of the forthcoming Marxism contra Subjectivity).

On the author: 'Intellectuals in the vein of Zizek and Watson have taken it upon themselves to litter their writings with accessible and informative pop culture analysis, bringing dense topics to life in a way Adorno et al themselves struggled with.' - Matt McManus (Lecturer, University of Michigan and the author of The Emergence of Postmodernity and The Political Right and Inequality).