The combination of post-Fordist precarious labour and cyberspace has produced a new sense of time. Work never ends, and we find ourselves constantly interrupted – by our employers, by social media updates, by smartphone alerts. Our attention is under attack so that it is increasingly difficult to achieve a state of absorption. Is it possible to escape this anxiety dream temporality without lapsing into anti-technological nostalgia? And what would a time free of capital’s urgencies feel like?

Mark Fisher is the author of Capitalist Realism (2009) and the forthcoming Ghosts of my Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. He is Programme Leader of the MA in Aural and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London and a lecturer at the University of East London.