Hello, my name is David Ronson and this is Talking Politics.

Today I'm talking to James Williams. We've had him on the podcast before.

He's the guy who won the 9 dots prize and now he's written the book.

Stand out of our light, freedom and resistance and the attention economy.

It's about technology, it's about politics, and it's about how we live.

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I caught up with James when he visited Cambridge a few weeks ago

and we started by talking about something that I just read, I'd also just read his book,

but I read it alongside Tina Brown's diaries of her time at Vanity Fair in the 1980s

and she describes a world that I thought sounded quite familiar to now.

This is from I think this is 1988, so she's editing Vanity Fair and she said,

I've commissioned a piece for the fall issue about the new unmanageable pace of life.

I'm calling it Acceleration Syndrome.

Carphones and call waiting and home faxes are making everything so revved up.

We're going to interview some guy who intends to purchase a portable phone

so that he has no dead time walking between appointments.

...