[Ideas] Jamie Bartlett: Radicals

Jamie Bartlett explores ‘Radicals’ – the individuals, groups and movements rejecting the way we live today and attempting to find an alternative. He takes us into the strange world of the innovators, disrupters, idealists and extremists who think society can do better, and believe they know how: techno-freaks questing for immortality, extremists seeking to recast a perfect white society, radical environmentalists striving to end the depletion of nature’s reserves, religious movements led by new messiahs, anarchic movements sweeping mainland Europe, fundamentalist Islamists living under seventh-century laws, neo-Luddites existing without modern technology, autonomous cooperatives in self-sustaining micro-societies, and virtual-worlders trying to live their lives online. As well as a fascinating glimpse at the people and ideas driving these groups, he also presents a startling argument: that radicals are the symptoms of a deep unrest with modernity and capitalist democracy, and provide the most plausible models for our future.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Jamie Bartlett is Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at the leading UK think tank Demos, where he is also Head of the Violence and Extremism Program. Jamie is also a tech blogger, journalist and author. His latest book ‘Radicals’ will be published in May 2017. In The Dark Net (2014) he explored the darknet and dark web in broad terms, describing a range of underground and emergent sub cultures, including social media racists, cam girls, self harm communities, darknet drug markets, cryptoanarchists and transhumanists. He regularly writes about online extremism and free speech, as well as social media trends.

GOOD READS 

Radicals (2017)

The Dark Net, Inside the digital underworld (2014)