Each week the college hosts a community dinner called Ration Club. It's open to anyone who'd like to find out more about the college and its work. To find out more or if you'd like to attend, please register.

​A weekend to introduce our new fellowship candidates to the year ahead:

Saturday Morning: Introduction to Political Technology
Saturday Afternoon: Overview of Core Modules
Saturday Evening: Fellows’ Dinner (please register)

​Sunday Morning: Overview of Advanced Modules
Sunday Afternoon: Group Exercise

​Calling all fellows of Newspeak House!

​Please come together for our annual gathering to see the graduation of fellows from 2024 and to welcome new fellowship candidates for 2025. Eat, drink, see some old faces, and hear updates from the college.

An unofficial launch party for the book If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares, which details the potential threats posed to humanity by artificial superintelligence.

In 2023, hundreds of AI luminaries signed an open letter warning that artificial intelligence poses a serious risk of human extinction. Since then, the AI race has only intensified. Companies and countries are rushing to build machines that will be smarter than any person. And the world is devastatingly unprepared for what would come next.

For decades, two signatories of that letter—Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares—have studied how smarter-than-human intelligences will think, behave, and pursue their objectives. Their research says that sufficiently smart AIs will develop goals of their own that put them in conflict with us—and that if it comes to conflict, an artificial superintelligence would crush us. The contest wouldn’t even be close.

How could a machine superintelligence wipe out our entire species? Why would it want to? Would it want anything at all? In this urgent book, Yudkowsky and Soares walk through the theory and the evidence, present one possible extinction scenario, and explain what it would take for humanity to survive.

​Join PauseAI for a celebration of the new book that is finally getting powerful people to take seriously the risk that AI will cause human extinction.

There will be a public recitation of the 13th chapter of the book, which discusses the actions that people can take to help improve the situation. This will be followed by general merriment where you can meet others concerned by AI risk.

• 18:00 - Doors open
• 19:00 - Public reading of chapter 13
• 20:00 - Socialising

​If everyone reads it, no one dies.

​This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty and fellowship candidates only.

​Dr Six Silberman leads us in exploring the complex interplay between institutions and organisations; humans; and technologies.

This first seminar introduces practical principles of governance, from designing simple, legitimate rules and roles to recognising how enforcement, communication, and collective memory shape organisational life. It then opens up big-picture questions about human flourishing, organisational health, value, and our relationship with the nonhuman world. Finally, it explores working definitions of organisations and institutions, how rules interlink to form roles and structures, and how institutions co-evolve with infrastructures.

​​​​​Campaign Lab is a community of politically-minded progressive data scientists, researchers and activists who are working together to build new election tools and change the way we analyse and understand political election campaigning.

Join us for our bi-weekly Campaign Lab Hack Night - a regular session to work on your tech side projects to help the progressive left campaign more effectively. You can either bring your own project or help out on one of our ongoing ones.

​​​​​Snacks and drinks are provided, all you need is to bring yourself and a laptop. You can also participate remotely via zoom link.

​​​​​All technologists, activists, organisers and campaigners are welcome. We also welcome any new people who are interested in politics, technology and evidence based campaign innovation on the left.

A strong, member-led grassroots participatory culture within Your Party is a strategic imperative for the left in the UK. We’ve set up this meeting to bring together the various groups and individuals working to establish that democratic culture - these include caucuses within YP, democracy/assembly, mutual aid, climate/youth, political/tech, culture/art and radical media groups.

​Our aim is to get everyone on the same page and develop a coordinated plan, identifying the roles each of our various groups and campaigns will play in the weeks and months ahead. We will have short inputs, break out groups and time for 1-2-1 networking.

​The primary objective of this overarching campaign for party democracy, is to establish the party as an instrument of the movement.

​This requires aligning the various activities developing at a local level among the emerging groups and to translate this into regional and national conversations and campaigns, and importantly political influence.

​This is a UK-wide movement. Though this meeting is in London, it will be fully hybrid to ensure full inclusion of our friends and comrades across the country.

​Organised by James Moulding, Archie Woodrow, Max Shanly, Roger Hallam, Jan Baykara (RS21), Assemble, Newspeak House

​Groups/people being contacted/provisionally coming include: YP Democratic Bloc, YP For A Party Republic, YP Democratic Socialists, Assemble, Humanity Project, RS21, CPGB

​Feel free to invite key organisers and groups who would be interested.

​​This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course, but is open to the public.

​What is wargaming? You’ll find out by taking part in a game centred on a current dispute near the town of Ebbsfleet.

​Through this simple wargame, you’ll learn what wargaming is, how it works, and why it’s a powerful tool for exploring complex systems.

​You’ll also have the chance to connect with other members of the Newspeak House community—making choices, brokering agreements, and discovering how decisions can be shaped or blocked, both in the local area and in national politics. In short, this session is about learning and about building the 2025/26 Newspeak House community.

​Alex Vince, Newspeak House faculty member for Wargaming, is a serving Civil Servant who has been utilising wargaming techniques over the last decade.

​Reading

• The Ministry of Defence Wargaming Handbook
• The Ministry of Defence Red Teaming Handbook
• The “Good Operation” guide for operational policy

​There is no specific pre-reading or knowledge required for this session - I would recommend not exploring the situation in Ebbsfleet further until after the session.

This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, but is open to the public.

​This is a lecture on distributed ledgers and databases. We’ll talk about:

• How do blockchains work?
• Are they helpful in governance?
• Are they actually helpful in governance?
• Are they helpful in other domains of human life?
• Bitcoin
• Ethereum and its L2s
• pod
• DAOs
• aragon.org
• mantle.xyz

​​Join us for an evening of research presentations, Q&A and conversation with ML Alignment & Theory Scholars past and present.

Talks start at 7:30pm, please arrive by then!

Researchers will present talks across a range of AI Safety / Alignment topics.

Afterwards, weather permitting, we will head up to the terrace to enjoy an evening of conversation and light refreshments.

​This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty and fellowship candidates only.

​Why is chat THE medium of the 21st century? What could be different about it? What could we try out with our special chat page? Do you want to build an agentic communication system?

​A session lead by John Evans, an expert chat developer and cooperative practitioner. He’s the creator of Spacetube, a tool that connects groups together via their internal chat systems e.g. Slack, Discord, Matrix, Whatsapp, Rocketchat, Signal. He is the lead developer for Chat Hackers, a community building Whatsapp tools for organisers.

​Reading (15 mins total)

• Carrington Event Telegraph transcript - The first chat was the telegraph, read a transcript from when a solar storm meant they could be used without batteries. Sending messages using ambient solar magnetism
• White House 1970s chatrooms with polls - The first ever computerised chat tool was built and used during a wage price crisis in the Nixon administration
• Intro to development methodologies - This is by me so you have to say you like it
• Matrix introduction documentation - Matrix is the protocol that our chat app is built on, this is the basic intro
• Matrix elements introduction - This is a bit further in depth
• Matrix protocol specification - This is the actual specification of the protocol, this is all you need to use the api, but you have to get used to reading a specification

​​This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty and fellowship candidates only.

​This module explores how groups make choices, resolve disagreements, and generate new ideas. We look at decisionmaking not just as the sum of individual opinions, but as a collective process shaped by communication, negotiation, and institutional design.

​Topics include negotiation and conflict management, decision theory, and the role of collective intelligence in creativity, problem-solving, and accuracy. Along the way, we examine both procedural approaches - like voting systems and negotiation frameworks - and emergent ones, where group behaviour arises from informal interactions and network effects.

​The aim is to give participants both conceptual tools and practical methods to understand, evaluate, and design decisionmaking processes in teams, organizations, and societies.

​This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty and fellowship candidates only.

​In this second seminar, Dr Six Silberman turns our attention to leadership and the human experience of organisational life. We will examine what leadership is, how it differs from related functions like management or decision-making, and whether it is always necessary. The session explores different styles and approaches to leadership, the conditions under which they flourish, and the possibility of distributing leadership across many people.

​From there, we shift focus to the individual in the organisation: how communication, anxiety, psychological safety, and self-determination shape people’s experience of work and collective endeavour. We will discuss how contexts can support or thwart basic psychological needs such as autonomy, competence, and relatedness, and how this affects engagement and performance.

​Finally, the seminar investigates boundaries, diversity, and contested terrain in organisations. We consider the value of psychological distance, the role of participation in generating legitimacy, and the dynamics of hype, bubbles, and crashes. Throughout, we ask: what makes for healthy organisational life, and how can leadership contribute (or fail to contribute) to it?

​About: Join us to connect and explore ideas supporting a Second Renaissance - our name for a potential a new cultural paradigm of interconnectedness, wisdom and inner growth.

​You can think of this as a local, in-person version of the online Oasis Community Calls. ​As in the online calls, we’ll use break-out groups and relational exercises to deepen connection and facilitate dialogue - though there’ll be plenty of unstructured socialising too.

​​Who is it for: Anyone who is intrigued by the idea of a second renaissance and wants to learn more, get more involved and build connections with like-minded people.

​This week’s theme is the work of Daniel Schmachtenberger, whose work uses systems thinking to understand and respond to global catastrophic risks.

​Suggested listening/watching in advance is the multi-part Bend not Break YouTube series with Nate Hagens - it’s a lot to get through so feel free to pick the one that seems most interesting and we can compare notes when we meet.

​Planned timings:

18​:30 Arrive and general socialising
​19.15 Structured discussion
20:00 Authentic relating practice
20.30 Move to the pub for further socialising

​Ten years ago, Xenofeminism called for a feminism of abolition, abstraction—and insurrection. A feminism not afraid of technological augmentation and the revaluation of nature itself.

​XF has spawned a ton of new research, new practices and new technical explorations.

In October 2025, we’re gathering to reflect, re-engage and reimagine the legacy. Join us for a public conversation between Helen Hester and Sophie Lewis.

New forms of imperialism are emerging on land, sky, sea, and space, led by messianic anti-democracy elites who seek to reshape the global polis. These new patriarchs wish to challenge the nation-state system itself, through the creation of privatised zones of exception such as seasteads, charter cities, and network states.

​Framed as libertarian utopias, these emerging polities leverage ecological exploitation, patriarchal chauvinism, and colonial logics to enshrine the crowns and empires of tomorrow. What can be learned from the Athenian democracy and piratical governance, to destabilise today’s strongman supremacy?

​After an introductory talk, we’ll use the bespoke FAU0X SALON facilitation system to discuss together anti-charismatic, anti-scalar, and anti-individualistic approaches to collective governance, including sortition, mutiny, and sapphirepunk.

​Wassim Z. Alsindi has spent the last decade orbiting the cryptocurrency space, first as enthusiast and then as critic. He holds a Ph.D. in ultrafast physics, and worked at the MIT Media Lab at the Digital Currency Initiative research group, where he co-founded MIT’s Cryptoeconomic Systems journal. Since 2018, he has written and spoken extensively on Bitcoin and network states.

​He is currently writing a book, provisionally titled The Crusades Never Ended: From Holy War to Technofascism, and has written recently on Open Swords: Software as Fascist Operating System for an upcoming book published by Aksioma Press. Previously, he co-wrote the foreword to the book edition of CCRU member Anna Greenspan’s PhD thesis, titled Capitalism’s Transcendental Time Machine. 

​Wassim is also the convener of the 0xSalon event series, creative studio, and publishing platform. The 0xSalon is a collaborative endeavour which critically interrogates digital culture through discourse events and residencies, producing scholarly and creative interventions in the process. Stewarded by 0xSalon team members, our community researches topics, organises events, and authors lore, theory, poetry, music, games, theatre, and visual art. 

​Further Reading

• ​Fau0x Salon Card Deck - http://0xsalon.pubpub.org/fau0xsalon ​- The Sapphirepunk Manifesto - https://sapphirepunk.com/ ​- Prophet Motives & Knightwork States (2023) - https://wassimalsindi.substack.com/p/the-chain-mail-gaze-i-prophet-motives
• ​Bitcointingency (2022) - https://weirdeconomies.com/contributions/bitcointingency ​- Twenty-Two Years of Transcendental Time Machines - https://0xsalon.pubpub.org/pub/22yearsttm/ ​- 0xSalon telegram group for events & updates - https://t.me/+SfS9Nfv-quHzlpjg

​To mark our first decade, Newspeak House presents a series of talks and workshops from fellows and faculty across a full weekend conference. Keep up with the latest developments in the field, meet faces new and old, relax on our terrace, enjoy an all day buffet, and socialise late into the evening. Full programme TBA.

17:00-23:00 Friday 10 October
10:00-23:00 Saturday 11 October
10:00-22:00 Sunday 12 October

Newspeak House 10th Anniversary: a decade of Political Technology

The tenth anniversary of Newspeak House marks a decade shaped by profound political and technological change.

Smartphones. Group chats. Attention algorithms. Crowdfunding. Language models. Cryptocurrencies. Collaborative documents. Streaming. Emoji reacts. Privacy laws. The gig economy. Six UK elections. Brexit. Covid. Momentum. Ukraine. Reform. Gaza. Trump (twice). Cambridge Analytica. The birth and collapse of Buzzfeed, Vice, Gawker. Wikidata from zero to a hundred million items.

In that time Newspeak House has hosted thousands of events, launched twenty books, and graduated over a hundred fellows, many now in senior positions across a spectrum of key institutions.

We have supported fledgling movements that are now part of the furniture: impact evaluation, open data, service design, election tech, existential risk, community strategy, campaign innovation, decentralised social media, digital democracy, cognitive security, prediction markets, data journalism, and many more.

Furthermore, Newspeak House has become home for the London College of Political Technology, offering a formal one year programme with a homegrown faculty and original curriculum, with a dedicated classroom and a majority of non-resident students.

To mark our first decade, Newspeak House presents a series of talks and workshops from fellows and faculty across a full weekend conference. Keep up with the latest developments in the field, meet faces new and old, relax on our terrace, enjoy our all day buffet, and socialise late into the evening.

Fundraiser: for the next ten years

If you don’t support your civic institutions, they go away. As well as a conference and celebration, this event is also a fundraiser to secure the future of the college and its role as a community space.

Newspeak House has weathered a series of serious challenges, not least the pandemic and its aftermath. This event is to celebrate overcoming those challenges, becoming one of the very few autonomous and independent third spaces to still be opening its doors. However, these challenges have demolished financial reserves that are difficult to rebuild beyond the college’s normal activities.

It is with this in mind that we have set our prices for this landmark celebration. Your ticket contributes to the ongoing financial health of Newspeak House, as well as scholarships for students in future years. We are extremely grateful for all of your support.

If you’ve enjoyed the programming and facilitation of Newspeak House over the last ten years, now is the time to show your support. If you can’t attend the event, you can still donate or become a member!

Hi - this is an event by Orta Therox and Peter Steinberger. Two well respected technologists who have a strong appreciation for using Claude Code as a tool for writing production-grade software. We’re not associated with Anthropic.

​We wanted to create a space for people to be able to talk through their experiences, and understand that for some it’s hard to speak publicly about using AI / LLM tooling. Talks are not recorded, nor is there a live-stream.

This meetup will be structured as a series of lightning talks, 5-15m long with talks which start along the lines of: “I was X when Claude Code Y”

​So, “I was impressed when Claude Code figured out a bug I had been…”, “I was disappointed when Claude Code deleted my production database” etc.

​We’re looking for grounded talks about the trade-offs, places where you’ve seen usage thrive, ways you’ve helped others use it, insights from unexpected outcomes and how it has changed your perspective.

​The timing plan:

• 19:00 - People arrive
• 19:30 - Intro, COC, and talks
• 20:30 - We wrap up talks, open chat
• 22:00 - We get kicked out

Sources of Social Power is the magnum opus of Michael Mann, a professor in Sociology at University of California.

Mann identifies the four principal ‘sources’ of power as being control over economic, ideological, military, and political resources. He examines the interrelations between these in a narrative history of power from Neolithic times, through ancient Near Eastern civilisations, the classical Mediterranean age, and medieval Europe, up to just before the Industrial Revolution in England. Rejecting the conventional monolithic concept of a ‘society’, Dr. Mann’s model is instead one of a series of overlapping, intersecting power networks. He makes this model operational by focusing on the logistics of power - how the flow of information, manpower, and goods is controlled over social and geographical space - thereby clarifying many of the ‘great debates’ in sociological theory.

It’s a dense read but a worthwhile one, so we’ve planned a workshop to help make it a bit more accessible. The workshop will have the following format:

• we’ll teach the model “sources of social power” in a briefer way than it’s covered in the book. The theories aren’t complex and there’s a lot of “academic rigour” and persuasion which we’ll skip :)
• we’ll split the fun part (the history!) into adapted sections and in groups we’ll read these sections, and then we’ll come back together to discuss the theory applied to history and the evolution of institutions of social power
• we’ll conclude with an informal discussion about what we’ve read, what was interesting, and about the workshop in the context of an anti-university

Part of the 2025 Antiuniversity Festival.