JAMES BRIDLE

“There’s a new breed of thinkers - people who’ve grown up through the collapse of an old order and are looking at the first shoots of a very different future. James Bridle is right at the front of this thinking. His writing weaves cultural threads that aren’t usually seen together, and the resulting tapestry is iridescently original, deeply disorientating and yet somehow radically hopeful. The only futures that are viable will probably feel like that. This is a pretty amazing book, worth reading and rereading.”
- Brian Eno -

James Bridle is an interdisciplinary artist, journalist, and technologist. They take current technologies (like drones, driverless cars and streaming services) and explores their possibilities via hypothetical objects, installations and thought pieces. Through these speculative scenarios, they’re creating a provocative space where we are forced to challenge, question, wonder at and critique our relationship with technology.

Their June 2018 TED Global talk The nightmare videos of children's YouTube — and what's wrong with the internet has already amassed 8 million views and solidified James' position as an authority on the state of the 21st century. Their critical lens and philosophical writing style has manifested in ‘The New Dark Age’, the artist-writer’s debut book which hypothesises how concepts like big data, algorithms and automated software are responsible for the loss of control we are currently experiencing in the world we have constructed. James has become the go-to for intelligent thought-leadership on how we connect and untangle our mad world.

Their latest book, Ways of Being, is a book about AI, non-human intelligence, ecology, biological computing, more-than-human relations, and much else. Published in the UK and U.S in 2022, the German translation will be released in 2023.

With the forensic eye of a journalist, their work does away with the sci-fi, ‘space age’ vision of the future, and instead reflects on our actual new realities based on current technologies. Core themes of their work surround artificial intelligence, data ownership censorship, automation, surveillance, security, and digital citizenship.

This 2018, James was invited by the prestigious Institute of Contemporary Arts London to conduct a rare interview with activist Chelsea Manning.    

Achievements

James Bridle’s influential 2017 article on Medium amassed 2 million views, pressuring Youtube to terminate over 50 channels targeting children (Press: Business Insider, The Independent, BBC, TechCrunch, The Guardian, Fast Company)

Thier TED talk has been watched nearly 8 million times (across all platforms)

‘Ways of Being’ has been selected

• The best design books of 2022 - Fast Company

• Selected for Audible’s Best Audiobooks of the Year 2022

• The 10 Best Books of 2022 - InsideHook

• Top 10 Favorite Book Bites of 2022 - Next Big Idea Club
  

Awards

London Design Museum’s Designer of the Year award
Excellence Award at the Japan Media Arts Festival
Future Generation Art Prize 
Walker Art Prize
Honorary Mention at the Prix Ars Electronica
Named one of the 100 Most Influential people in Europe by Wired

Selected Press links: The Guardian, Vice, BBC Radio, New York Times, Co.Design, Wall Street Journal, BBC News , Financial Times, Tomorrows, Serpentine Galleries, Wired , Dazed, Accenture