On the couch... With award-winning author Mark O’Connell

From Kilkenny, Mark O’Connell is a columnist at Slate and staff writer at The Millions, and a regular contributor to The New Yorker.

His book, To Be a Machine, an investigation of the ways people are trying to overcome death with technology, won the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize. Mark is the second Irish author to ever win the prestigious award How much TV do you think you watch every week?

I really don’t know. I don’t watch much in a personal capacity. Most days, I spend about 40 minutes in the vicinity of a television while my son watches cartoons on Net ix. I can’t quite say I’ve watched every episode of Lego Ninjago several times over, but I have de nitely been in the room while every episode has been on.

What’s the coolest TV robot/android/ synthetic humanoid – and why? You’d probably be within your rights to assume I’d have an answer to this, having written a book about transhumanism, but my interest in the topic never really intersected with any interest in TV shows about, or featuring, robots. Is the talking car from Knight Rider a legitimate answer? He seemed kind of cool, in an aloof and ironically detached way. I seem to remember him having a certain lofty contempt for David Hasselho , or at least his character, and I have some respect for that.

Were you a fan of Tomorrow’s World as a kid?

Not especially. It was one of those things that came on, and you watched because there was nothing else on. It would be a lot more interesting to watch old episodes now. Past visions of the future that failed to materialise are much more fascinating than present predictions of the future.

Are you a “telly on, laptop on the knees and phone for tweeting” over-load kind of person?

I’m happy to con rm that I am not. That sounds like an administrative nightmare.

All-time favourite TV drama, comedy and documentary? Drama: The Sopranos. Comedy: Nathan For You is a work of profound genius, and probably the most consistently hilarious thing to ever air on television. Documentary-wise, I really like the work of Adam Curtis.

What show would you like a cameo in?

I’d like to be one of those people on the Antiques Roadshow who brings in a perfectly preserved tea-set from the mid-1850s. The expert would get all riled up and tell me it’s as strong an example of an 1850s tea-set as they’ve ever seen, and you can tell from my face that I think I’m about to become very rich very quickly. But then the expert gives some incredibly disappointing gure like 200 quid or whatever. Those situations speak to me on a very deep and human level. Unfortunately, I don’t own any kind of tea-set.

What shows do you watch the oldfashioned way, i.e. once a week at a particular time?

I’m sorry to say I can’t remember the last time I did this. Those days are over, and I for one am not looking back.

Will we ever literally meld with our TVs, David Cronenberg-style?

This seems like a long shot.