We had no idea whether we were reading the proposal of a professor, a novelist, a postman, a student or a lawyer.
- Simon Goldhill
Up against competition from over 700 other entrants from around the world, Williams’ 3,000-word answer to the set question ‘Are digital technologies making politics impossible?’ was deemed the most original and innovative by the ten-strong Board of leading academics, journalists and thinkers.
His entry Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Persuasion in the Attention Economy argues that digital technologies are making all forms of politics worth having impossible as they privilege our impulses over our intentions and are ‘designed to exploit our psychological vulnerabilities in order to direct us toward goals that may or may not align with our own’. He covers:
- How the ‘distractions’ produced by digital technologies are much more profound than minor ‘annoyances’
- How so-called ‘persuasive’ design is undermining the human will and ‘militating against the possibility of all forms of self-determination’
- How beginning to ‘assert and defend our freedom of attention’ is an urgent moral and political task
As well as the US$100,000 prize money, Williams has been awarded a book deal with Cambridge University Press for a book in which he will develop his ideas on this topic. He will be supported by the editorial team at Cambridge University Press and will spend a term at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), Cambridge University.
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Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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