Pinboard (robertogreco) https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/public/ recent bookmarks from robertogreco idle.news — On the Difference Between Rest and Idleness 2026-06-09T21:27:15+00:00 https://idle.news/blog/on-the-difference-between-rest-and-idleness/ robertogreco“Rest is permitted because it returns you improved. Idleness is suspect because it might not return you at all.” — House Rule."]]> idleness unproduct nonproduct rest capitalism production productivity slow unschooling time wastingtime leisure artleisure leisurearts freetime stillness performance boredom creativity work labor https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:ac17ef018faf/ Opinion | The Nobel-Winning Psychologist Who Believed He Found the Secret to Happiness - The New York Times 2026-05-29T06:35:30+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/opinion/decision-making-herbert-simon.html robertogreco 2026 davidepstein psychology herbertsimon decisionmaking johnasllenpaulos innumeracy probability optimization socialmedia us china maximization maximizing harukimurakami goodenough whatmatters sufficiency options satisfaction voluntarysimplicity mihalycsikszentmihalyi flow cognitiveload comparison cognition ai artificialintelligence choices decisionsm life living howwelive cv boredom datingapps lothing uniform https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:1b803425a8c8/ Nuestra Locura - YouTube 2026-05-21T05:22:35+00:00 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdQsPIV5nH-xUuF8y3LlyxNH5Degou-jn robertogreco child mentalhealth psychology society insomnia anxiety attention boredom melancholy anger repair freedom constanzamichelson rage violence philosophy culture psychoanalysys https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:8d6766a41751/ Children need stress and discomfort in order to grow up | Aeon Essays 2026-05-11T20:07:13+00:00 https://aeon.co/essays/children-need-stress-and-discomfort-in-order-to-grow-up robertogreco children 2026 apprenticeships behavior howwelern adulthood niklasserning adolescence youth mentalhealth families parenting tinapaynebryson dansiegel shefalitsabary sarahokwell-smith experience conflict overparenting emotions self-efficacy danielkahneman authoritarianism collaboration senses sensory discomfort cathycreswell anxiety accommodation worry overprotectiveness play relationship life living melanieklein johnbowlby williamsears marthasears donaldwinnicott jeromekagan violence abuse neglect trauma coercion discipline love instruction guidance autonomy levvygotsky dianabaumrind overprotecting resilience care caring wellbeing well-being malaise emotionregulation relationships flourishing kindredsquared childhood dissent hardship depression cognitivebias deliberation howwethink thinking distress harm shortterm longterm annoyance emotionalsupport stillness practice acculturation aversion suporession self-control boredom school schooling education howwelearn learning comfort friendship challenges challenge a https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:caca3df79cca/ Defending Our Consciousness Against the Algorithms 2026-04-19T05:06:48+00:00 https://nautil.us/defending-our-consciousness-against-the-algorithms-1279260 robertogreco michaelpollan boredom internet socialmedia online web instagram attention 2026 algorithms consciousness novelty chatbots ai artificialintelligence aipsychosis kalinachristofhadjiilieva thinking howwethink reading howweread christofhadjiilieva resistancemeditation slow chatgpt sycophancy technology politics policy uncertainty freedom interiority https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:28d164b24a70/ Limiting Not Just Screen Time, But Screen Space - NOEMA 2026-04-06T02:54:40+00:00 https://www.noemamag.com/limiting-not-just-screen-time-but-screen-space/ robertogreco“What would it mean to limit not only screen time, but screen space?” Those dreaming of a nascent cognitive revolution are imagining that Borges’ one-to-one map will be finally useful — that if we just feed enough text, enough human knowledge, into the machine, it will comprehend the world in a way we never can. Even if we had the time, labor and energy to attempt this, why would we? Why not put that effort into talking to each other? The alternative is an increasingly familiar solipsism. A solipsistic person believes the self is the only reality. Other minds, other bodies, may as well be an illusion. Today’s internet bends us toward solipsism. We no longer imagine ourselves to be placing our images and our voices into the internet. We imagine ourselves — our physical beings — to be living within it. We imagine the internet to be our environment. In “Trick Mirror,” journalist Jia Tolentino warned that the internet, once imagined as a space of freedom, had become a mechanism for surveillance, performance and commodification. Online life encourages self-optimization and branding at the expense of connection. “In physical spaces, there’s a limited audience and time span for every performance,” Tolentino writes. “Online, your audience can hypothetically keep expanding forever, and the performance never has to end.” Tolentino focused on time, but this internet is an endless stage, too, one with no wings, no exit, no place to step off and be alone again. “brb” once acknowledged departure and faith in return. It reminded us of the body behind the screen. Now, we are infinitely available, and AI is sold to us as the tireless and needless assistant. But our bodies continue to live in the world with stubborn persistence, despite Silicon Valley’s dream of the immortal avatar, the ability to upload our essence into a durable machine, which is a dream of escaping death and environment alike. Most of the questions worth asking are not about how to transcend the environment, but how to inhabit it. How to live together in shared space. Many social, historical and economic forces led me to check my work email in the bathroom. Among them is the way we have come to imagine the internet not as a place we go, but as a space we inhabit. We make sense of abstract experience through bodily metaphors grounded in orientation and sensation: Up is good, down is bad, warmth is affection, weight is importance. These metaphors shape how we act and what we value. Window, weather: Change the metaphor and you change the possibilities for thought and action. If the internet once taught us to say “brb,” perhaps the work ahead is to recover that ethic of interruption, to remember the body in a room, waiting to return."]]> 2026 lauramartin interner web online ai artificialintelligence intelligence bodies embodiment physical environment senses wireless wifi mobile attention privacy space sharedspace smartphones place chatgpt samaltman openai connectivity gps jiatolentino spikejonze her llms joecruz socialspaces emotions cognition cognitivescience borges connection audience time performance freedom boredom surveillance commodification solipsism data representation sensory decisionmaking isolation https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:afe49fb94827/ Lynda Barry on How the Smartphone Is Endangering Three Ingredients of Creativity: Loneliness, Uncertainty & Boredom | Open Culture 2026-03-25T03:14:30+00:00 https://www.openculture.com/2026/03/lynda-barry-how-the-smartphone-is-endangering-three-ingredients-of-creativity.html robertogrecoThe phone gives us a lot but it takes away three key elements of discovery: loneliness, uncertainty and boredom. Those have always been where creative ideas come from. — Lynda Barry In the spring of 2016, the great cartoonist and educator, Lynda Barry, did the unthinkable, prior to giving a lecture and writing class at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. She demanded that all participating staff members surrender their phones and other such personal devices. Her victims were as jangled by this prospect as your average iPhone-addicted teen, but surrendered, agreeing to write by hand, another antiquated notion Barry subscribes to:
The delete button makes it so that anything you’re unsure of you can get rid of, so nothing new has a chance. Writing by hand is a revelation for people. Maybe that’s why they asked me to NASA – I still know how to use my hands… there is a different way of thinking that goes along with them.
Barry—who told the Onion’s AV Club that she crafted her book What It Is with an eye toward bored readers stuck in a Jiffy Lube oil-change waiting room—is also a big proponent of doodling, which she views as a creative neurological response to boredom:
Boring meeting, you have a pen, the usual clowns are yakking. Most people will draw something, even people who can’t draw. I say “If you’re bored, what do you draw?” And everybody has something they draw. Like “Oh yeah, my little guy, I draw him.” Or “I draw eyeballs, or palm trees.” … So I asked them “Why do you think you do that? Why do you think you doodle during those meetings?” I believe that it’s because it makes having to endure that particular situation more bearable, by changing our experience of time. It’s so slight. I always say it’s the difference between, if you’re not doodling, the minutes feel like a cheese grater on your face. But if you are doodling, it’s more like Brillo. It’s not much better, but there is a difference. You could handle Brillo a little longer than the cheese grater.
Meetings and classrooms are among the few remaining venues in which screen-addicted moths are expected to force themselves away from the phone’s inviting flame. Other settings—like the Jiffy Lube waiting room—require more initiative on the user’s part. Once, we were keener students of minor changes to familiar environments, the books strangers were reading in the subway, and those strangers themselves. Our subsequent observations were known to spark conversation and sometimes ideas that led to creative projects. Now, many of us let those opportunities slide by, as we fill up on such fleeting confections as funny videos and all-you-can-eat servings of social media. It’s also tempting to use our phones as defacto shields any time social anxiety looms. This dodge may provide short term comfort, especially to younger people, but remember, Barry and many of her cartoonist peers, including Daniel Clowes, Simon Hanselmann, and Ariel Schrag, toughed it out by making art. That’s what got them through the loneliness, uncertainty, and boredom of their middle and high school years.
"The book you hold in your hands would not exist had high school been a pleasant experience for me… It was on those quiet weekend nights when even my parents were out having fun that I began making serious attempts to make stories in comics form." - Adrian Tomine, introduction to 32 Stories
Barry is far from alone in encouraging adults to peel themselves away from their phone dependency for their creative good. Photographer Eric Pickersgill’s Removed imagines a series of everyday situations in which phones and other personal devices have been rendered invisible. (It’s worth noting that he removed the offending articles from the models’ hands, rather that Photoshopping them out later.) Computer Science Professor Calvin Newport’s book, Deep Work, posits that all that shallow phone time is creating stress, anxiety, and lost creative opportunities, while also doing a number on our personal and professional lives. Author Manoush Zomorodi’s TED Talk on how boredom can lead to brilliant ideas, below, details a weeklong experiment in battling smartphone habits, with lots of scientific evidence to back up her findings. [embed: "How Boredom Can Lead to Your Most Brilliant Ideas | Manoush Zomorodi | TED" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c73Q8oQmwzo "Do you sometimes have your most creative ideas while folding laundry, washing dishes or doing nothing in particular? It's because when your body goes on autopilot, your brain gets busy forming new neural connections that connect ideas and solve problems. Learn to love being bored as Manoush Zomorodi explains the connection between spacing out and creativity."] But what if you wipe the slate of digital distractions only to find that your brain’s just… empty? A once occupied room, now devoid of anything but dimly recalled memes, and generalized dread over the state of the world? The aforementioned AV Club interview with Barry offers both encouragement and some useful suggestions that will get the temporarily paralyzed moving again:
I don’t know what the strip’s going to be about when I start. I never know. I oftentimes have—I call it the word-bag. Just a bag of words. I’ll just reach in there, and I’ll pull out a word, and it’ll say “ping-pong.” I’ll just have that in my head, and I’ll start drawing the pictures as if I can… I hear a sentence, I just hear it. As soon as I hear even the beginning of the first sentence, then I just… I write really slow. So I’ll be writing that, and I’ll know what’s going to go at the top of the panel. Then, when it gets to the end, usually I’ll know what the next one is. By three sentences or four in that first panel, I stop, and then I say “Now it’s time for the drawing.” Then I’ll draw. But then I’ll hear the next one over on another page! Or when I’m drawing Marlys and Arna, I might hear her say something, but then I’ll hear Marlys say something back. So once that first sentence is there, I have all kinds of choices as to where I put my brush. But if nothing is happening, then I just go over to what I call my decoy page. It’s like decoy ducks. I go over there and just start messing around.
Note: An earlier version of this post appeared on our site in 2017."]]> lyndabarry slow smartphones creativity loneliness uncertainty boredom technology productivity art artmaking 2016 2026 manoushzomorodi 2017 howweread howwewrite howwemake making drawing observation noticing https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:91d02c342f88/ Designed to be specialists | A Working Library 2026-02-19T22:08:21+00:00 https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/designed-to-be-specialists robertogreco[There is an] extreme human and cultural misery to which not only the industry of advanced capitalism but above all its institutions, its education and its culture, have reduced the technical worker. This education, in its efforts to adapt the worker to his task in the shortest possible time, has given him the capacity for a minimum of independent activity. Out of fear of creating men [sic] who by virtue of the too “rich” development of their abilities would refuse to submit to the discipline of a too narrow task and to the industrial hierarchy, the effort has been made to stunt them from the beginning: they were designed to be competent but limited, active but docile, intelligent but ignorant outside of anything but their function, incapable of having a horizon beyond that of their task. In short, they were designed to be specialists. [Gorz, A Strategy for Labor, page 106] Impossible not to think here of the rise of labor unions in the tech industry and the subsequent rapid (and surely coincidental) deployment of so-called AI which—unlike nearly every prior technological development in software—arrived with mandates for its use and threats of punishment for the noncompliant. Elsewhere, Gorz talks of the trend of workers being reduced to “supervisors” of automated systems that are doing the work for them. But simply watching work happen, without any of the creative, autonomous activity that would occur if they were doing the work themselves, gives rise to a degree of boredom and stupefaction that can be physically painful and spiritually debilitating. Anyone who has experienced the pleasure of creative work is likely to greatly resist that reduction; better to create workers who have never known such things. There’s some use in distinguishing here between the worker who, having learned the skills of writing software over many years, now turns to so-called AI to assist her in that task; and the worker who will follow her some years hence and may never learn those skills, but will know only the work of supervision. The former, elder worker may find some interest or curiosity in applying her knowledge to this new technology, especially as the modes and methods for doing so are still being developed. But what of the worker who begins their work a decade from now, who has been specialized to do nothing more than ask for something? What will she know beyond that menial, dispiriting little task? What kind of people are we designing now?"]]> mandybrown 2026 andrégorz labor work unions technology ai artificialintelligence capitalism automation software boredom compliance management specialization immiserations education culture society hierarchy laborunions supervision power control https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:dec03e083ff1/ Gaming the System - Comment Magazine 2026-02-16T00:22:17+00:00 https://comment.org/gaming-the-system/ robertogreco us society loneliness boredom despair scottpell youth socialisolation isolation economics rustbelt hannaharendt socialcapital economy gentrification professionalclass class mentalhealth socialengagement gerontocracy agesegregation children adolescence videogames games gaming men gender saraheekhoffzylstra agency matthewloftus genz generationz opportunity jonathanhaidt keantwenge claremorell withdrawal jdvance policy birthrate addiction chrisopherlasch patrickdeneen elites elitism midwest behavior dystopia production productivity rural socialization https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:477d55651344/ Why the Do Nothing Challenge Doesn’t Do Much for You 2026-01-18T06:03:46+00:00 https://nautil.us/why-the-do-nothing-challenge-doesnt-do-much-for-you-1262005/ robertogreco donothing boredom creativity jamesdanckert attention agency 2026 meaning meaningmaking rawdogging woopsyang tiktok distraction overstimulation self-control https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:e6ed3ad20bbf/ 2025, So Far 2026-01-05T22:23:32+00:00 https://kalebhorton.ghost.io/2025-so-far/ robertogreco kalebhorton 1988 2025 timetravel davidletterman francisfordcoppola smartphones computers computing internet web online deadt degradation us death boredom https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:7414b691c18a/ You're being rude. Put away your phone. - by Robinson Meyer 2025-09-18T23:42:37+00:00 https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/youre-being-rude-put-away-your-phone robertogreco robinsonmeyer 2025 manners smarthphones attention presence society rules humanism stevejobs mobile phones socialmedia life living relationships rudeness photography cameras schools schooling dumbphones technology internet connectivity togetherness companionship outside outdoors conviviality boredom mediocrity wisdom eevryday volunteering offline online web screens screentime https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:b6ed2785728e/ The War on Kids and Student Resistance: An interview with author and filmmaker Cevin Soling. - YouTube 2025-07-11T21:26:37+00:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYqeL-4GG6Q robertogreco cevinsoling unschooling schools schooling compulsory 2025 education johntaylorgatto patfarenga authoritarianism resistance children childrensrights oppression abuse institutions howwelearn learning deschooling youth abolition schoolabolition forgetting boredom adolescence obedience authority curiosity empathy neurosis anxiety depression assessment grades grading ptsd surveillance alienation democracy meaning meaningmaking compliance insurrection civildisobedience helplessness self-worth self-esteem children'srights https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:fe9679be7b22/ Craig Mod on the Creative Power of Walking ‹ Literary Hub 2025-05-14T15:43:10+00:00 https://lithub.com/craig-mod-on-the-creative-power-of-walking/ robertogreco craigmod walking thinking howwethink boredom writing howwewrite attention distraction solviturambulando creativity imagination howwework presence 2025 https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:26b01a2a7c3e/ Developer creates endless Wikipedia feed to fight algorithm addiction - Ars Technica 2025-02-09T21:53:25+00:00 https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/02/new-wikitok-web-app-allows-infinite-tiktok-style-scroll-of-wikipedia/ robertogreco wikipedia socialmedia encyclopedias internet online web tiktok boredom doomscrolling addiction benjedwards isaacgemal wiktok https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:beeb04d25f99/ 30 days no smartphone - YouTube 2024-11-18T19:22:35+00:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xo18us2TLQ robertogrecointernetgirl 2024 attention routines smartphones boredom indifference comfort change offline connectivity technology society https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:162a21428b9a/ Why main character syndrome is philosophically dangerous | Aeon Essays 2024-10-06T23:29:14+00:00 https://aeon.co/essays/why-main-character-syndrome-is-philosophically-dangerous robertogreco 2024 annagotlib self-centeredness perspective love solipsism narcissism sociopaths sociopathy ethics longtermists psychology humanity climatechange nuclear\war time self anonymity solitude boredom lostness erichfromm loving small slow technology technosolutionism longevity immortality mortality significance insignificance harryfrankfurt albertcamus mcs aleksandarfatic theoryofmind stories storytelling emforster npcs williammacAskill petersinger effectivealtruism politics academia exceptionalism ashleyward michaelwetter socialmedia online internet hildelindemann narrative narratives identity interdependence individualism philosophy maincharactersyndrome tiktok davidchalmers xkcd randallmonroe self-importance camus tescreal nerdreich singularity singularitarianism extropianism rationalism cosmism longtermism transhumanism extroprianism capitalism fascism technofascism https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:512e9bae5e2c/ Hungry Ghosts of the Attention Economy - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review 2024-08-16T20:03:24+00:00 https://tricycle.org/article/hungry-ghosts-of-the-attention-economy/ robertogreco nathanielgallant 2024 byung-chulhan buddhism zenbuddhism burnout boredom patience attention mediation contemplation slow stillness margarettalbot stsuzuki philosophy solitude identity selfhood emptiness nothingness religion descartes zenjuearthlynmanuel chenxinghan liberation spirituality friendliness relationships mahayana compassion positivity stimulus exhaustion negativity zen https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:29a09cbfbf3f/ Working With Our Hands 2024-05-09T18:36:20+00:00 https://thecommon.place/p/ep165 robertogreco tshoxenreider natemarshall 2024 technology lmsacasas ivanillich labor work bodies hands making trades matthewcrawford tradework mindbody christianity friction tools embodiment knowledgework physical plumbing manuallabor ai artificialintelligence paulkingsnorth toolsforconviviality internet web online order disorder howwethink thinking reflection humanism humans humanity rest boredom service interconnectedness inquiry creativity complexity sophistication learning howwelearn interconnected https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:533f122ff3d6/ How to live without your phone - by Sam Kriss 2024-04-13T21:26:41+00:00 https://samkriss.substack.com/p/how-to-live-without-your-phone robertogreco 2024 samkriss culture offline smartphones food photography scfreens whatsapp gps anxiety hyperconnectivity internet online web boredom presence reality reading howweread interest attention time https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:689a05ef1e74/ Designing Friction 2024-02-14T19:58:47+00:00 https://designingfriction.com/ robertogreco lunamaurer roelwouters alexandrabarancová friction design internet web online resistance slow technology digital senses humanism humanness experience ui ux interaction convenience immediacy effort predictability autonomy ai artificialintelligence miriamrasch discomfort comfort instantgratification boredom flow pace bodies positivity negativity smoothness disagreement behavior via:daniellucas https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:7bd06f9ea637/ "Anything that comes out of a writer is fiction." | Writer Benjamín Labatut | Louisiana Channel - YouTube 2024-02-01T02:45:19+00:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-OFnHwuTBg robertogreco 2022 benjamínlabatut writing literature fiction nonfiction science howwewrite research wonder fascination reality robertobolaño pascalquignard eliotweinberger williamburroughs wgsebald form stories storytelling citation cv canon information text texts knowledge art entertainment despair inspiration boredom books reading howweread references stealing ideas excitement pace speed style beauty poetry publishing audience audiencesofone relationships discovery self-expression blogs blogging obsessions self identity writers crisis brain howwethink nature jabaker theperegrine spirit soul meaning meaningmaking sensemaking expression makingsense universe thinking philosophy life living https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:9262dbacad7c/ How to Keep Time - The Atlantic [bookmarking for Season 5, "How to Keep Time" - this podcast covered other topics before that.] 2024-01-23T05:11:04+00:00 https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/how-to-build-a-happy-life/ robertogreco time clocks ianbogost beccarashid 2023 2024 podcasts psychology productivity us age aging social rest work busyness control future anxiety idleness oliverburkeman hobbies kieransetiya listening zen mindfulness happiness presence leisure laziness neerupaharia melissamazmanian ignaciosánchezprado waiting slow slowness culture society alexsoojung-kimpang downtime boredom jannalevin patience charanranganath sarahmanguso behavior addiction actions neuroscience mentalhealth luxury scarcity status italy humblebragging thorsteinveblen veblengoods socialmobility diamonds money self-worth self-importance compulsion overscheduling plans planning spontaneity avoidance multitasking taskswitching unschooling schooliness balance presentationofself guilt parenting timemanagement capitalism overwork stress success failure deadlines life living anticipation optimism pleasure satisfaction erinreid west burnout gender eviatarzerubavel mothers benedictinemonks monks spirituality industrialrevolution freetime scheduling calenda https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:536b77c372f2/ The Ordinary Literary World of Lodge 49 - Post45 2023-08-09T15:54:42+00:00 https://post45.org/2021/11/the-ordinary-literary-world-of-lodge-49/ robertogrecolodge49 television tv 2021 2020 arinkeeble thomaspynchon literature modernity boredom knowledge meaning meaningmaking soldarity philipmaciak https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:41eb75d3b1d6/ Opinion | This Is Your Brain on ‘Deep Reading.’ It’s Pretty Magnificent. - The New York Times 2022-12-05T01:20:54+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/22/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-maryanne-wolf.html robertogreco reading 2022 howweread literacy ezraklein maryannewolf neuroscience books brain mashallmcluhan humans language hermannhesse naomibaron nicholascarr gishjen wendellberry johndunne georgeeliot middlemarch deepreading internet online text web socialmedia yiruma theoryofmind empathy information immersion criticalanalysis criticalthinking attention skimming informationoverall learning memory retention mind content experience process insight epiphany plasticity orthography medium walterong comprehension neilpostman digital print affordances awareness sampling method absorption immersiveness speed slow multitasking entertainment engagement feeling inference perspective deduction time efficiency understanding processing habits flexibility conditioning skills skill media mediums nature training exercise mindsets methods proust technology marcelproust purpose beauty complexity habitsofmind stateofmind statesofmind focus thinking wisdom offline meditation leisure reflection contemplation aristotle knowledge productivity https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:ac808fa3cded/ The Apes Are Fake But The Boredom Is Real 2022-02-03T21:54:55+00:00 https://thehustlearchitect.substack.com/p/the-apes-are-fake-but-the-boredom robertogreco nfts bitcoin blockchain crypto cryptocurrency cryptocurrencies 2022 boredape gordonmatta-clark boredom speculation markets boredapeyachtclub vitruviusgrind celebrities property ownership https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:dd9d6e23e88c/ What is collecting? – ScrewDownCrown 2021-11-17T06:59:52+00:00 https://screwdowncrown.wordpress.com/2021/11/15/what-is-collecting/ robertogrecoDuring the blitz on London I saw how simple and profound was the passion for things of one’s own. The morning after poor people had been bombed out, they grieved far less for the house or rooms where they had been living than for their things, the things their mother had left them, or their children had given them. The bomb which destroyed their things destroyed part of themselves --“On Collecting” by Lord Eccles In short, all forms of accumulating objects can potentially be “necessities of life”, if the role of emotional well-being in physical survival is adequately taken into account. Another aspect of collection is whether it is worth distinguishing random accumulations of objects from purposeful selections. Some will say the term “collection” should be reserved for things that have been systematically ‘curated’ according to a unifying principle and should not be used to unnecessarily dignify the miscellaneous hoarding of possessions. The problem here is that you can’t really find a universally agreed definition for how “collections” are different from “accumulations,” because everyone will have their own criteria! For example, if I collect things I like – then this could very well be all my possessions! The truth is, all accumulations are actually an individual’s own selections, and therefore they will be imbued with meaning (for each person) through their own selectivity. Every accumulation, whatever additional significance it may be found to possess, has the unity that comes from its telling something about a human being who lived in a particular time and place. Of course, it might be useful to distinguish between people who deliberately pursue their own ideas of coherent groupings and people who give no conscious thought to why their possessions are multiplying as they are; but this differentiation must still acknowledge that both types of people are still “collectors.” Then there’s the consideration of the length of time one possesses something, and whether this has any bearing on someone being a collector (or not). Simply put – once you add something to a collection, how long it stays there shouldn’t really be a factor. Some people, at all levels of sophistication and deliberateness in their collecting, willingly dispose of items and start on others. Werner Muensterberger’s book “Collecting: An Unruly Passion” references “subjective value” in his definition of collecting, to make the point that the desirability of an object to a collector is independent of the market price it would fetch. I was originally in the camp who differentiated such people in the watch world as ‘dealers’ rather than ‘collectors’ but I think I’ve changed my view. Those who collect for investment (at least in part) or take some pride in the monetary value of what they possess… simply make this (monetary value) a part of the total psychological underpinning of their “collecting criteria”. Who are we to judge? Muensterberger saw the origins of collecting in childhood traumas. He argued that when kids had the experience of feeling deprived of the protection and support of those close to them, they sought relief through controllable physical objects. In doing this, they became emotionally attached to one or more items which became associated in their minds with the relief of frustration and mental distress. The act of demonstrating that one possesses and controls the objects is a pleasurable experience, and one that is repeatedly satisfying because it creates “the illusion of being able to cope”. Muensterberger’s discussion goes deeper into the psychology of collecting than many other writings on the subject. Philippe Jullian’s Les Collectioneurs, for example is relatively superficial; At one point he says “Every collection is inspired by the same basic factors: fear of boredom, desire for immortality, aesthetic sensibility, vanity, speculation.” Similarly, Holbrook Jackson, in “The Anatomy of Bibliomania”, under the heading “The Causes of Bibliomania” breaks down the sections into “Greed,” “Vanity,” and “Fashion”. While all these reasons might impact peoples’ collecting, what is still unclear is why collecting was the chosen remedy – for example, there are other ways of passing time (i.e. curing boredom), investing (i.e. speculation), or showing off (i.e. vanity). The most fundamental question in trying to understand collecting is to ask why collecting should be the path chosen to attain personal goals. So at this point we might decide it is best to start defining collecting by the particular combinations of goals that characterise individual collectors; but this doesn’t really reach the deepest levels of the drive to collect. An inquiry like Muensterberger’s, which tries to identify the mental processes underlying the more overt motivations, is of course an important step, even if it does not tell the whole story. Walter Benjamin’s essay, “Unpacking My Library: A Talk about Book Collecting,” suggests there is more to be said. One of Benjamin’s most insightful observations is framed as a question: “For what else is this collection but a disorder to which habit has accommodated itself to such an extent that it can appear as order?” The pleasures of “the chase” and “adding to one’s collection” are described by Benjamin as follows: “The most profound enchantment for the collector is the locking of individual items within a magic circle in which they are fixed as the final thrill, the thrill of acquisition, passes over them.” Concluding thoughts The human need to find order is, to me, the most academic explanation of collecting. The other explanations such as a fascination with chance, curiosity about the past, and a desire for understanding can all slot under the umbrella of “the urge to tame the external world”. This general idea, in which collecting is traced to a human need for making the environment seem less threatening and more understandable, has been much in evidence in the past few decades, as intellectual interest in the process of collecting has increased. Ultimately, we should try and see collecting not as evasion and escapism but as a human urge to connect with the world, to make sense of it so that we can feel in harmony with it and experience it more richly. Vladimir Nabokov, wrote a well-known account of his “obsession” with butterflies and butterfly-collecting which was originally published in The New Yorker on 12 June 1948. Butterflies served as tangible reminders of episodes in Nabokov’s own life, and even the smell of ether, used as the killing substance for one of his earliest childhood catches, “would always cause the door of the past to fly open.” Nabokov’s repeated acts of observation and pursuit of butterflies, made him an expert lepidopterist who contributed to the field through important published papers. His understanding that collecting and rigorous thinking go hand in hand was shown by his ridicule of those who advocated the relaxing of scientific standards for collectors: “Their solicitude for the “average collector who cannot be made to dissect” is comparable to the way nervous publishers pamper the “average reader”—who cannot be made to think“. Nabokov of course wrote novels as well as scientific articles, and he saw the connections: “I discovered in nature the nonutilitarian delights that I sought in art. Both were a form of magic, both were a game of intricate enchantment and deception.” Nabokov’s most moving words for a description of “the highest enjoyment of timelessness” came to him when he stood outdoors among “rare butterflies“- and I think this captures the essence of collecting quite perfectly:
This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which I cannot explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love, a sense of oneness with sun and stone, a thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern, perhaps to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to the tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal. --Vladimir Nabokov – Butterflies: On life as a lepidopterist.
That’s the bottom line really… we’re all seeking ecstasy – one watch at a time. There is no right answer, and every single collector’s journey is unique… the more we try to make sense of it, the less we realise we know… and it also explains why we can’t stop, and why the often-used phrase “we will stop when we die” is pretty much the only universal truth that exists!"]]> collections collecting kingflum 2021 wernermuensterberger williambuellsprague history hobbies pastimes lordecckes philippejullian holbrookjackson walterbenjamin vladimirnabokov butterflies order libraries books bookcollecting bibliomania immortality boredom greed vanity fashion aesthetics speculation objects possessions accumulation selections behavior archives education learning howwelearn https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:671f899a07fd/ Collections | Search | Forms of Education: Couldn't Get a Sense of It | Asia Art Archive 2021-09-25T19:56:15+00:00 https://aaa.org.hk/en/collections/search/library/forms-of-education-couldnt-get-a-sense-of-it robertogreco education teaching howweteach howwelearn learning art poetry greogrysholette eunsongkim pablohelguera dubasambolec mfanomfa shellyasquith bodeis administration highered highereducation thirdteacher roeerosen auroraharris tedheibert mohamedalifadlabi alternative altgdp beatrizsantiagomuñoz judychicago bisanhusamabu-eisheh diegobruno clarebutcher robertpaulwolff chusmartinez sezginpoynik audunmoretensen aeronbergman alejandrasalinas sondraperry nicolemaloof debt chriskraus martharosler walidraad irenaborić marjeticapotrč form formlessness unlearning unschooling deschooling class maification anti-knowing ideology disability margins pragmatism artmarket content boredom surprise canon ethnography observation hesitation fear improvisation pleasure aesthetics howwework sameness arteducation https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:1c0bd75e321b/ What remains. A writer's journey to Japan in times of impossible travel｜おかえりハウス｜note 2021-03-30T02:34:18+00:00 https://note.com/okaerihouse/n/n86101dd6f537 robertogrecojapan michaelavieser forests time slow multispecies tea japanese buddhism shinto poetry walking space silence nature morethanhuman animism boredom presence awakening 1995 1996 1997 wildlife 2018 2017 onsen monasteries meditation 2002 temples minakatakumagusu netowrks interconnectedness 2021 satoyama maps mapping present future shinichinakazawa social sociallife stillness hierarchy horizontality kumano shizauka kyoto yakushima gardens yuvalnoahharari kamonochōmei yuvalharari interconnectivity interconnected https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:0673883b129c/ Opinion | You Are Doing Something Important When You Aren’t Doing Anything - The New York Times 2021-01-17T01:58:11+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/21/opinion/summer-lying-fallow.html robertogreco bonnietsui slow happiness productivity busyness 2020 rest reading howweread boredom summer hustle hustleculture iansohn work labor balance resistance sleep dormancy shelleycarson mariekondo meaningmaking understanding production https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:f828b3e12196/ The Importance of Doing Nothing with Bonnie Tsui - REI Co-op Journal 2021-01-17T01:57:37+00:00 https://www.rei.com/blog/podcasts/the-importance-of-doing-nothing-with-bonnie-tsui robertogreco bonnietsui slow idleness 2020 boredom productivity happiness swimming reading howwelearn howweread writing production water time work labor https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:3fbf7274fa63/ Designers and Planners Take Note: People’s Fondest Memories Rarely Involve Technology | ArchDaily 2020-09-06T15:20:57+00:00 https://www.archdaily.com/946090/designers-and-planners-take-note-peoples-fondest-memories-rarely-involve-technology robertogreco soka sua sokauniversityofamerica 2020 architecture design technology deikepeters urbanplanning jamesrojas johnkamp vassilyorgov cities alisoviejo memory memories nostalgia togetherness cars discovery exploration trains buses mobility downtime boredom learning howeelearn informal informallearning freedom liberation urbanism planning urban https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:873ec8e0ef69/ David Graeber on Twitter: "I suspect the key to the introduction of modern industrial boredom is the creation of the industrial-model school system; kids are not spontaneously bored, they typically say they're bored only when adults make them do something 2020-09-04T07:36:39+00:00 https://twitter.com/davidgraeber/status/1255099735385530369 robertogrecoI simply don’t understand how anybody can be bored … ever!! in non-industrial societies, people can speak of the pleasure of just sitting around doing absolutely nothing, breathing the air, looking at the light. I occasionally heard this in Madagascar. “What’s your favourite thing to do?” “Sometimes, just nothing.” 2/ in the ancient & medieval world, shepherds were famous as musicians & mystics, since they had lots of time to just sit around. It was always assumed to be one of the best lives you could have. Pastoralists i.e., in Somalia, often feel the same. 3/ I suspect the key to the introduction of modern industrial boredom is the creation of the industrial-model school system; kids are not spontaneously bored, they typically say they’re bored only when adults make them do something they don’t want to do 4/ pre-industrial ages knew melancholia, & identified it with artists & thinkers (it roughly corresponded to what we’d now call clinical depression), but it was Baudelaire, the prophet of modernism, who turned that into boredom, & thus embraced boredom as an aspect of creativity 5/ I guess I should write an essay on boredom but 1) it would take time, 2) somebody probably already has, 3) it’d be kind of dull. 6/”]]> davidgraeber schooling schools education boredom idleness unschooling deschooling factories schooliness captivity freedom liberation learning howwelearn unproduct nonproduct capitalism lcproject openstudioproject tscnmy children somalia madagascar attention repetition meaning industrialization modernity baudelaire creativity pastoralism shepherds time https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:659a9d371311/ Opinion | What if Some Kids Are Better Off at Home? - The New York Times 2020-08-31T18:48:02+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/10/opinion/coronavirus-school-closures.html robertogreco joannaschroeder children school schooling schooliness unschooling deschooling homeschool stress anxiety bullying happiness adhd covid-19 coronavirus disabilities disability gender race identity sexuality neurodiversity neurodivergence parenting youth teens learning howwelearn openstudioproject lcproject distancelearning online schedules homework pace overscheduling health rosalindwiseman emotions sports athletics competition pressure boredom frustration psychology schools https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:b91a7179faac/ Unschooling Your Kids During Coronavirus Quarantine 2020-07-13T04:31:18+00:00 https://www.thecut.com/2020/03/unschooling-your-kids-during-coronavirus-quarantine.html robertogreco astrataylor 2020 unschooling deschooling schools schooling learning parenting children johnholt growingwithoutschooling gws coronavirus covid-19 trust idealism pandemic reading howwelearn freedom lakauffman unstructured boredom literacy downtime slow busywork schooliness structer self-directed self-directedlearning inequality climatechange https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:46ba9812afec/ “Procrastination is an emotion regulation problem, not a time management problem,” says psychologist / Boing Boing 2019-05-01T15:48:08+00:00 https://boingboing.net/2019/03/26/procrastination-is-an-emoti.html robertogrecoProcrastination isn’t a unique character flaw or a mysterious curse on your ability to manage time, but a way of coping with challenging emotions and negative moods induced by certain tasks — boredom, anxiety, insecurity, frustration, resentment, self-doubt and beyond. ... In fact, there’s an entire body of research dedicated to the ruminative, self-blaming thoughts many of us tend to have in the wake of procrastination, which are known as “procrastinatory cognitions.” The thoughts we have about procrastination typically exacerbate our distress and stress, which contribute to further procrastination, Dr. Sirois said. But the momentary relief we feel when procrastinating is actually what makes the cycle especially vicious. In the immediate present, putting off a task provides relief — “you’ve been rewarded for procrastinating,” Dr. Sirois said. And we know from basic behaviorism that when we’re rewarded for something, we tend to do it again. This is precisely why procrastination tends not to be a one-off behavior, but a cycle, one that easily becomes a chronic habit.]]> procrastination pschology 2019 via:davidtedu fusciasirois boredom anxiety self-doubt frustration resentment https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:190a21641bc0/ 🔠 Jack and the Magic Key | Buttondown 2018-07-08T02:06:02+00:00 https://buttondown.email/robinrendle/archive/fbd3ee30-eb41-42a0-a9e4-51c63f75e059 robertogrecoMy idea for a class is you just sit in the classroom and read aloud until everyone is smiling, and then you look around, and if someone is not smiling you ask them why, and then you keep reading—it may take many different books—until they start smiling, too."]]> robinrendle education curiosity boredom 2018 parenting play maryreuffle learning howwelearn unschooling engagement resourcefulness cv experimentation creativity keys scrappiness lcproject openstudioproject nexttonothing https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:cc6ea17f411e/ OCCULTURE: 52. John Michael Greer in “The Polymath” // Druidry, Storytelling & the History of the Occult 2018-02-26T04:38:42+00:00 https://45minuteradiohour.libsyn.com/52-john-michael-greer-in-the-polymath-druidry-storytelling-the-history-of-the-occult robertogreco 2017 johnmichaelgreer druidry craft druids polymaths autodidacts learning occulture occult ryanpeverly celts druidrevival history spirituality thedivine nature belief dogma animism practice life living myths mythology stories storytelling wisdom writing howwewrite editing writersblock criticism writer'sblock self-criticism creativity schools schooling television tv coelbrenalphabet 1980s ronaldreagan sustainability environment us politics lies margaretthatcher oraltradition books reading howweread howwelearn unschooling deschooling facetime social socializing cardgames humans human humanism work labor boredom economics society suffering misery trapped progress socialmedia computing smarthphones bullshitjobs shinto talismans amulets sex christianity religion atheism scientism mainstream counterculture magic materialism enlightenment delusion judgement contemplation imitation fundamentalism hate knowledge boardgames autodidactism https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:3c856aa4cd42/ Book Detail | Polity: The Scent of Time A Philosophical Essay on the Art of Lingering, by Byung-Chul Han 2018-01-06T22:04:18+00:00 http://politybooks.com/bookdetail/?isbn=9781509516049 robertogreco books toread byung-chulhan lingering neoliberalism idleness humans humanism labor work contemplation thinking philosophy life living culture society time boredom presence latecapitalism postcapitalism capitalism latestagecapitalism https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:70b330daff2c/ Equitable Schools for a Sustainable World - Long View on Education 2017-10-09T00:58:28+00:00 http://www.longviewoneducation.org/equitable-schools-for-a-sustainable-world/ robertogreco“Young people I interviewed showed strong awareness of the broader socio-economic and political environments that affect their lives. They are acutely conscious of their marginal structural position and they despise and rebel against the abuse and corruption that they observe as the elites in power get richer and they become poorer … They are critical of unsound economic policies that focus on growth but do not enlarge the productive base by creating more jobs.” There’s no sustainable future in Western countries measuring educational success by the extent to which they out-compete the globalized Other. In her conclusion, Silva presents Wally, who is like her other working-class interview subjects in every respect except his political activism, as a token of hope. Instead of privatizing his problems, he is able to translate them into political issues. The alternative lies not in making schools different, but making the world ‘different’, sustainable, and just."]]> benjamindoxtdator 2017 equality equity socialjustice schools sustainability education children economics globalization competition bellhooks scottmcleod deanshareski litercy infoliteracy sethgodin capitalism digitalredlining digitaldivide chrisgilliard marianamazzucato innovation labor work rosslevine yonarubinstein jordanweissman aliciarobb carljames race class boredom richardelmore mikeschmoker robertpianta johngoodlad engagement passivity criticism learning howwelearn technology johndewey democracy efficiency davidsnedden neoliberalism richardflorida tonyagner erikbrynjolfsson andremcafee carlbenediktfrey michaelosborne davidautor inequality surveillance surveillancecapitalism shoshanazuboff jonathanalbright henrygiroux jennifersilva alcindahonwana change precarity ha-joonchang https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:8a99bdca2646/ how to do nothing – Jenny Odell – Medium 2017-07-01T07:34:33+00:00 https://medium.com/@the_jennitaur/how-to-do-nothing-57e100f59bbb robertogreco…we’re riddled with pointless talk, insane quantities of words and images. Stupidity’s never blind or mute. So it’s not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop people expressing themselves but rather force them to express themselves; what a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and ever rarer, thing that might be worth saying. (emphasis mine) He wrote that in 1985, but the sentiment is something I think we can all identify with right now, almost to a degree that’s painful. The function of nothing here, of saying nothing, is that it’s a precursor to something, to having something to say. “Nothing” is neither a luxury nor a waste of time, but rather a necessary part of meaningful thought and speech." … "In The Bureau of Suspended Objects, a project I did while in residence at Recology SF (otherwise known as the dump), I spent three months photographing, cataloguing and researching the origins of 200 objects. I presented them as browsable archive in which people could scan the objects’ tags and learn about the manufacturing, material, and corporate histories of the objects. One woman at the Recology opening was very confused and said, “Wait… so did you actually make anything? Or did you just put things on shelves?” (Yes, I just put things on shelves.)" … "That’s an intellectual reason for making nothing, but I think that in my cases, it’s something simpler than that. Yes, the BYTE images speak in interesting and inadvertent ways about some of the more sinister aspects of technology, but I also just really love them. This love of one’s subject is something I’m provisionally calling the observational eros. The observational eros is an emotional fascination with one’s subject that is so strong it overpowers the desire to make anything new. It’s pretty well summed up in the introduction of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, where he describes the patience and care involved in close observation of one’s specimens:
When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to capture whole, for they break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will onto a knife blade and then lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book — to open the page and let the stories crawl in by themselves.
The subject of observation is so precious and fragile that it risks breaking under even the weight of observation. As an artist, I fear the breaking and tattering of my specimens under my touch, and so with everything I’ve ever “made,” without even thinking about it, I’ve tried to keep a very light touch. It may not surprise you to know, then, that my favorite movies tend to be documentaries, and that one of my favorite public art pieces was done by the documentary filmmaker, Eleanor Coppola. In 1973, she carried out a public art project called Windows, which materially speaking consisted only of a map with a list of locations in San Francisco. The map reads, “Eleanor Coppola has designated a number of windows in all parts of San Francisco as visual landmarks. Her purpose in this project is to bring to the attention of the whole community, art that exists in its own context, where it is found, without being altered or removed to a gallery situation.” I like to consider this piece in contrast with how we normally experience public art, which is some giant steel thing that looks like it landed in a corporate plaza from outer space. Coppola instead casts a subtle frame over the whole of the city itself as a work of art, a light but meaningful touch that recognizes art that exists where it already is." … "What amazed me about birdwatching was the way it changed the granularity of my perception, which was pretty “low res” to begin with. At first, I just noticed birdsong more. Of course it had been there all along, but now that I was paying attention to it, I realized that it was almost everywhere, all day, all the time. In particular I can’t imagine how I went most of my life so far without noticing scrub jays, which are incredibly loud and sound like this: [video] And then, one by one, I started learning other songs and being able to associate each of them with a bird, so that now when I walk into the the rose garden, I inadvertently acknowledge them in my head as though they were people: hi raven, robin, song sparrow, chickadee, goldfinch, towhee, hawk, nuthatch, and so on. The diversification (in my attention) of what was previously “bird sounds” into discrete sounds that carry meaning is something I can only compare to the moment that I realized that my mom spoke three languages, not two. My mom has only ever spoken English to me, and for a very long time, I assumed that whenever my mom was speaking to another Filipino person, that she was speaking Tagalog. I didn’t really have a good reason for thinking this other than that I knew she did speak Tagalog and it sort of all sounded like Tagalog to me. But my mom was actually only sometimes speaking Tagalog, and other times speaking Ilonggo, which is a completely different language that is specific to where she’s from in the Philippines. The languages are not the same, i.e. one is not simply a dialect of the other; in fact, the Philippines is full of language groups that, according to my mom, have so little in common that speakers would not be able to understand each other, and Tagalog is only one. This type of embarrassing discovery, in which something you thought was one thing is actually two things, and each of those two things is actually ten things, seems not only naturally cumulative but also a simple function of the duration and quality of one’s attention. With effort, we can become attuned to things, able to pick up and then hopefully differentiate finer and finer frequencies each time. What these moments of stopping to listen have in common with those labyrinthine spaces is that they all initially enact some kind of removal from the sphere of familiarity. Even if brief or momentary, they are retreats, and like longer retreats, they affect the way we see everyday life when we do come back to it." … "Even the labyrinths I mentioned, by their very shape, collect our attention into these small circular spaces. When Rebecca Solnit, in her book Wanderlust, wrote about walking in the labyrinth inside the Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, she said, “The circuit was so absorbing I lost sight of the people nearby and hardly heard the sound of the traffic and the bells for six o’clock.” In the case of Deep Listening, although in theory it can be practiced anywhere at any time, it’s telling that there have also been Deep Listening retreats. And Turrell’s Sky Pesher not only removes the context from around the sky, but removes you from your surroundings (and in some ways, from the context of your life — given its underground, tomblike quality)." … "My dad said that leaving the confined context of a job made him understand himself not in relation to that world, but just to the world, and forever after that, things that happened at work only seemed like one small part of something much larger. It reminds me of how John Muir described himself not as a naturalist but as a “poetico-trampo-geologist-botanist and ornithologist-naturalist etc. etc.”, or of how Pauline Oliveros described herself in 1974: “Pauline Oliveros is a two legged human being, female, lesbian, musician, and composer among other things which contribute to her identity. She is herself and lives with her partner, along with assorted poultry, dogs, cats, rabbits and tropical hermit crabs.” Incidentally, this has encouraged me to maybe change my bio to: “Jenny Odell is an artist, professor, thinker, walker, sleeper, eater, and amateur birdnoticer.” 3. the precarity of nothing There’s an obvious critique of all of this, and that’s that it comes from a place of privilege. I can go to the rose garden, or stare into trees all day, because I have a teaching job that only requires me to be somewhere two days a week, not to mention a whole set of other privileges. Part of the reason my dad could take that time off was that on some level, he had enough reason to think he could get another job. It’s possible to understand the practice of doing nothing solely as a self-indulgent luxury, the equivalent of taking a mental health day if you’re lucky enough to work at a place that has those. But here I come back to Deleuze’s “right to say nothing,” and although we can definitely say that this right is variously accessible or even inaccessible for some, I believe that it is indeed a right. For example, the push for an 8-hour workday in 1886 called for “8 hours of work, 8 hours of rest, and 8 hours of what we will.” I’m struck by the quality of things that associated with the category “What we Will”: rest, thought, flowers, sunshine. These are bodily, human things, and this bodily-ness is something I will come back to. When Samuel Gompers, who led the labor group that organized this particular iteration of the 8-hour movement, was asked, “What does labor want?” he responded, “It wants the earth and the fullness thereof.” And to me it seems significant that it’s not 8 hours of, say, “leisure” or “education,” but “8 hours of what we will.” Although leisure or education might be involved, what seems most humane is the refusal to define that period. That campaign was about a demarcation of time. So it’s interesting, and certainly troubling, to read the decline in labor unions in the last several decades alongside a similar decline in the demarcation of public space. True public spaces, the most obvious examples being parks and libraries, are places for — and thus the spatial underpinnings of — “what we will.”" … "The way that Berardi describes labor will sound as familiar to anyone concerned with their personal brand as it will to any Uber driver, content moderator, hard-up freelancer, aspiring YouTube star, or adjunct professor who drives to three campuses in one week:
In the global digital network, labor is transformed into small parcels of nervous energy picked up by the recombining machine. … The workers are deprived of every individual consistency. Strictly speaking, the workers no longer exist. Their time exists, their time is there, permanently available to connect, to produce in exchange for a temporary salary. (emphasis mine)
The removal of economic security for working people — 8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, 8 hours for what we will — dissolves those boundaries so that we are left with 24 potentially monetizable hours that are sometimes not even restricted to our time zones or our sleep cycles." … "I also started noticing some crows in my neighborhood. At the time I had just read The Genius of Birds, and I’d learned the crows are incredibly intelligent and can recognize and remember human faces. They can in fact teach their children which are the good and the bad humans, good being ones who feed them and bad being ones who try to catch them or do something else weird. I have a balcony, so I started leaving a few peanuts out for the crows." … "This isn’t only about me watching birds. I think a lot about what these birds see when they look at me — and I’m sure anyone who has a pet is familiar with this feeling. I assume they just see a female human who for some reason seems to pay attention to them.⁵ They don’t know what my work is, they don’t see progress — they just see recurrence, day after day, week after week. And through them, I am able to inhabit that perspective, to see myself as the human animal that I am, and when they fly off, to some extent, I can inhabit that perspective too, noticing the shape of the hill that I live on and where all of the tall trees and good landing spots are. There are ravens that I noticed live half in and half out of the rose garden, until I realized that there is no “rose garden” to them. These alien animal perspectives on me and our shared world have provided me not only with an escape hatch from contemporary anxiety but also a reminder of my own animality and the animateness of the world I live in. Their flights enable my own literal flights of fancy, recalling a question that one of my favorite authors, David Abram, asks in Becoming Animal: “Do we really believe that the human imagination can sustain itself without being startled by other shapes of sentience?”⁶" … "But beyond strategic / activist self preservation, there’s something else to be gained here: Doing nothing teaches us how to listen. I’ve already mentioned literal listening, or Deep Listening, but this time I mean it in a broader sense. To do nothing is to hold yourself still so that you can perceive what is actually there. As Gordon Hempton, an acoustic ecologist who records natural soundscapes, put it: “Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything.” There are a lot of us, and I’m certainly not immune to this, who could stand to learn how to listen better, and I mean listen to other people. As a lover of weird internet things, I definitely do not want to write off the amazing culture and also activism that happens online. But even with the problem of the filter bubble aside, the platforms that we use to communicate with each other about very important things do not encourage listening. They encourage shouting, or having a “take” after having read a single headline. I alluded earlier to the problem of speed, but this is also a problem of listening, and of bodies. There is in fact a connection between listening in the Deep Listening, bodily sense, and listening, as in me understanding your perspective. Writing about the circulation of information, Berardi makes a helpful distinction between connectivity and sensitivity. Connectivity is the rapid circulation of information among compatible units — an example is something getting a bunch of shares very quickly and unthinkingly by likeminded people on Facebook. With connectivity, you either are or are not compatible. Red or blue; check the box. In this transmission of information, the units don’t change, nor does the information. Sensitivity, in contrast, involves a difficult, awkward, ambiguous encounter between two differently shaped bodies that are themselves ambiguous — and this meeting, this sensing, requires and takes place in time. Not only that, due to the effort of sensing, the two entities might come away from the encounter a bit differently than they went in. This always brings to mind a month-long artist residency I once attended with two other artists in an extremely remote location in the Sierra Nevada. There wasn’t much to do at night, so one of the artists and I would sometimes sit on the roof and watch the sunset. She was Catholic and from the Midwest; I’m sort of the quintessential California atheist. I have really fond memories of the languid, meandering conversations we had up there about science and religion. And what strikes me is that neither of us ever convinced the other — that wasn’t the point — but we listened to each other, and we did each come away differently, with a more nuanced understanding of the other person’s position." … "Ukeles’ interest in maintenance was partly occasioned by her becoming a mother in the 1960s. In an interview she explained, “Being a mother entails an enormous amount of repetitive tasks. I became a maintenance worker. I felt completely abandoned by my culture because it didn’t have a way to incorporate sustaining work.” Her 1969 Maintenance Manifesto is actually an exhibition proposal in which she considers her own maintenance work as the art. She says, “I will live in the museum and I customarily do at home with my husband and my baby, for the duration of the exhibition … My work is the work.”" … "I think of the hours and hours that I have now spent in the rose garden, putting off returning to my work on a glowing two-dimensional screen an arm’s length from my face; or the days on which I’ll leave just to get coffee and wind up almost involuntarily on top of a hill four hours later, regardless of the shoes I’m wearing; or the fact that the last five or six books I’ve read have had to do with animal intelligence and the importance of landscape in memory and cognition. I don’t know where any of this, where I, will end up."]]> jennyodell idleness nothing art eyeo2017 photoshop specimens care richardprince gillesdeleuze recology internetarchive sanfrancisco eleanorcoppola 2017 1973 maps mapping scottpolach jamesturrell architecture design structure labyrinths oakland juliamorgan chapelofthechimes paulineoliveros ucsd 1970s deeplisening listening birds birdwatching birding noticing classideas observation perception time gracecathedral deeplistening johncage gordonhempton silence maintenance conviviality technology bodies landscape ordinary everyday cyclicality cycles 1969 mierleladermanukeles sensitivity senses multispecies canon productivity presence connectivity conversation audrelorde gabriellemoss fomo nomo nosmo davidabram becominganimal animals nature ravens corvids crows bluejays pets human-animalrelations human-animalelationships herons dissent rowe caliressler jodythompson francoberardi fiverr popos publicspace blackmirror anthonyantonellis facebook socialmedia email wpa history bayarea crowdcontrol mikedavis cityofquartz er https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:eb75f2831428/ DIAGRAM >> The Structure of Boredom 2017-06-25T02:17:12+00:00 http://thediagram.com/2_1/str_boredom.html robertogreco boredom diagrams thomasoden psychology theology 1969 now present awareness presence guilt future past anxiety responsiveness imagination trust emptiness meaning meaningmaking https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:bafe8401eecd/ 'Capitalism will always create bullshit jobs' | Owen Jones meets Rutger Bregman - YouTube 2017-03-10T02:49:23+00:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsutNKH7KiE robertogreco rutgerbregman bullshitjobs consumerism utopia work labor davidgraeber universalbasicincome 2017 inequality purpose emotionallabor society socialism leisurearts artleisure boredom stress workweek productivity policy politics poverty health medicine openborders crime owenjones socialjustice progressivism sustainability left us germany migration immigration capitalism netherlands populism isolationism violence pragmatism realism privatization monopolies ideology borders ubi https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:8aaeb83be4a2/ An Elegy for the Library - The New York Times 2017-02-22T02:15:45+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/opinion/sunday/an-elegy-for-the-library.html robertogreco libraries maheshrao refuge society utopia pocketsofutopia boredom reverie 2017 solace liberation https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:c95063d6f1d4/ Bat, Bean, Beam: Against boredom 2016-07-12T02:57:59+00:00 https://bat-bean-beam.blogspot.com/2016/07/against-boredom.html robertogreco giovannitiso 2016 boredom technology creativity culture attention history georgesperec violence https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:57942db0122d/ 9 Elephants in the (Class)Room That Should “Unsettle” Us - Will Richardson 2016-04-12T05:47:50+00:00 http://willrichardson.com/9-elephants-classroom-unsettle-us/ robertogreco willrichardson 2015 education schools curriculum engagement 2016 memory content boredom schooling schooliness deschooling unschooling mitchresnick seymourpapert emilymitchum grades grading parenting lcproject openstudioproject committeeoften matthewlieberman franksmith learning forgetting howwelearn howweteach teaching pedagogy hardfun sfsh https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:4dd5b2fbaa14/ What Kids Need From Grown-Ups (But Aren't Getting) : NPR Ed : NPR 2016-02-29T03:44:29+00:00 http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/02/09/465557430/what-kids-need-from-grown-ups-but-arent-getting robertogreco children education play unstructuredtime learning preschool school curriculum howwelearn rules structure lcproject openstudioproject conversation norms behavior howweteach teaching unschooling deschooling listening coryturner erikachristakis relationships boredom imagination parenting guidelines process empathy policy transitions sfsh schools https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:bcf96402da89/ Joy: A Subject Schools Lack - The Atlantic 2016-02-22T00:05:17+00:00 http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/01/joy-the-subject-schools-lack/384800/ robertogreco education joy susanengel 2016 howwelearn schools poverty pleasure responsibility competence rules boredom learning https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:9557847bd4eb/ Rob Grayson - ““People whose governing habit is the... 2015-11-17T06:58:17+00:00 https://www.facebook.com/rob.grayson/posts/10153697198129993 robertogreco chrishedges power consumerism boredom powerlessness mortality paranoia spectacle literacy government politics wendellberry capitalism https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:99d8f0cfd327/ The Back-to-School-Night Speech We'd Like to Hear* | Psychology Today 2015-10-04T20:22:20+00:00 https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-homework-myth/201510/the-back-school-night-speech-wed-hear robertogreco alfiekohn emergentcurriculum education unschooling deschooling learning children schools priorities tcsnmy agency choice homework grades grading howwelearn howweteach teaching curriculum reggioemilia anxiety boredom exhaustion play democracy textbooks caring progressive discipline behavior competition awards https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:4b974e64b1a2/ Children prefer simple pleasures to organised trips, research finds - Telegraph 2015-06-30T05:01:23+00:00 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/9480785/Children-prefer-simple-pleasures-to-organised-trips-research-finds.html robertogreco children parenting play 2012 boredom entertainment everyday small slow childhood memory summer https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:206cd8be0f28/ The History of Boredom | Science | Smithsonian 2015-06-10T06:00:42+00:00 http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-history-of-boredom-138176427/?all robertogreco 2012 boredom via:anne depression attention manohladargis johneastwood psychology engagement petertoohey https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:b7d2093b62f4/ magazine / archive / Barbara Visser | MOUSSE CONTEMPORARY ART MAGAZINE 2014-07-31T17:04:24+00:00 http://moussemagazine.it/articolo.mm?id=1071 robertogreco laziness sloth capitalism liberation freedom 2014 svenlütticken labor work resistance anarchism bartlebythescrivner demoker guydebord karlmarx marxism communism dedollehond paullafargue situationist malcomclaren bowwowwow pirating music 1980s lifelonglearning unemployment idleness leisure leisurearts artleisure sleep boredom learning raoulvaneigem freetime openstudio openstudioproject lcproject revolution fluxus productivity giorgioagamben potentiality hermanmelville hermanschuurman agamben https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:9da13b034aea/ What four months on Mars taught me about boredom– Kate Greene – Aeon 2014-03-03T10:27:56+00:00 http://aeon.co/magazine/being-human/what-four-months-on-mars-taught-me-about-boredom/ robertogreco boredom 2014 kategreen creativity exploration psychology https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:ff69157edbf4/ In Conversation with Raoul Vaneigem | e-flux 2014-01-23T08:06:58+00:00 http://www.e-flux.com/journal/in-conversation-with-raoul-vaneigem/ robertogreco raoulvaneigem art politics economics life living situationist humans consumerism learning education unschooling deschooling curiosity power anarchism anarchy totalitarianism creativity johncage détournement psychogeography models derive servitude love oarystis humanity everyday boredom productivity efficiency time temporality money desire chaos solidarity networks guydebord freedom freeness museums culture hansulrichobrist 2009 nomadiclearning lcproject openstudioproject work labor artleisure leisure leisurearts artwork profiteering explodingschool cityasclassroom flow universallearning cedricprice thinkbelts dérive shrequest1 detournement https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:bab71262babe/ BruceS — Predicting 2014 2013-12-28T19:27:26+00:00 http://brucesterling.tumblr.com/post/71416001308/predicting-2014 robertogreco 2014 isaacasimov leisurearts artleisure automation work labor universalbasicincome predictions boredom society ubi https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:2bf0ee4df796/ Twitter Shows Epidemic of School Boredom | New Republic 2013-12-17T02:50:15+00:00 http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115928/twitter-shows-epidemic-school-boredom robertogreco boredom education schools teens adolescence 2013 highschool learning twitter instagram vine https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:360901a852be/ Preschool lessons: New research shows that teaching kids more and more, at ever-younger ages, may backfire. 2013-12-02T22:42:01+00:00 http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2011/03/why_preschool_shouldnt_be_like_school.single.html robertogreco psychology play parenting lifestyle toys 2011 via:lukeneff learning directinstruction motivation discovery boredom alisongopnik pedagogy howweteach wcydwt constructivism lauraschulz daphnabuchsbaum tomgriffiths patrickshafto teaching noahgoodman https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:7d5e32eaccd5/ Messages The City Wants Us To Hear – The New Inquiry 2013-11-27T18:52:15+00:00 http://thenewinquiry.com/features/messages-the-city-wants-us-to-hear/ robertogreco boredom cities nyc history accuracy fear joy society life living 2010 timothylevitch speedology 2002 suffering humanity faith nietzsche bennettmiller destruction creativity https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:cf82326cb604/ Phoenix live on Q | Q with Jian Ghomeshi | CBC Radio 2013-03-27T05:37:39+00:00 http://www.cbc.ca/q/blog/2013/03/26/phoenix-live-on-q/ robertogreco phoenix music jianghomeshi interviews collaboration creativity life glvo cv 2013 process howwework teamwork boredom amateurs professionals amateurism https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:7946ab42c7a5/ Lonely, but united: Sherry Turkle and Steven Johnson on technology's pain and promise | The Verge 2012-10-05T20:30:21+00:00 http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/5/3459938/sherry-turkle-and-steven-johnson-on-technology-pain-promise robertogreco paulmiller etiquette attention tradeoffs connection stimulus boredom distraction internet cities 2012 stevenjohnson sherryturkle https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:ec32c79cbf7b/ As Children’s Freedom Has Declined, So Has Their Creativity | Psychology Today 2012-09-24T03:57:03+00:00 http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201209/children-s-freedom-has-declined-so-has-their-creativity robertogreco intelligence standardization standardizedtesting kyungheekim torrancetestofcreativethinking ttct learning us trends control boredom schools petergray 2012 education children creativity freedom parenting https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:381ad6c308cc/ My life after LulzSec: 'I feel more fulfilled without the internet' | Technology | The Observer 2012-09-17T07:38:05+00:00 http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/sep/09/jake-davis-anonymous-charged-bail robertogreco via:anne onlinelife online boredom disconnectedness adolescence time companionship behavior attention slow web internet offline 2012 jakedavis anonymous Lulzsec https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:b1e1600f63d9/ Warren Ellis » How To See The Future [What? Not yet bookmarked?] [Purposely tagged 'boredome'.] 2012-09-11T03:37:21+00:00 http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=14314 robertogreco boredom boredome spacetravel jgballard philipkdick takealookaroundyou appreciation science sciencefictioncondition rearviewmirror space nasa voyager voyager1 vintage vintagespace magic weliveinamazingtimes perspective atemporality iphone googlegloves googleglass manufacturednormalcy venkateshrao reality marshallmcluhan noticing hereandnow now lookaround futurism sciencefiction 2012 scifi technology future warrenellis https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:e98a3f254251/ Better - Merlin Mann 2012-08-25T16:55:07+00:00 http://www.merlinmann.com/better/ robertogreco writing media culture 2008 sincerity emptiness addiction boredom noise relationships small slow meaningmaking meaning signaltonoise attention productivity via:lukeneff purpose merlinmann gtd https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:f113fcae6f2a/ Against School - John Taylor Gatto 2012-08-19T07:24:20+00:00 http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm robertogreco arifleischer ellwoodcubberley capitalism karlmarx georgepeapody compulsory alexanderinglis standardizedtesting jamesbryantconant oretesbrownson williamjames christopherlasch marktwain hermanmelville margaretmead boredom horacemann society culture philosophy psychology economics learning education deschooling schooling unschooling 2003 johntaylorgatto https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:27b833977fb4/ Question. Why is it that no other species but man... - more than 95 theses 2012-08-02T17:05:22+00:00 http://ayjay.tumblr.com/post/28502792892/question-why-is-it-that-no-other-species-but-man robertogreco writing_prompt boredom via:lukeneff https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:409b27010d4d/ The most boring culture on Earth 2012-07-28T16:25:12+00:00 http://kottke.org/12/07/the-most-boring-culture-on-earth robertogrecoAccording to Fajans, the Baining eschew everything that they see as "natural" and value activities and products that come from "work," which they view as the opposite of play. Work, to them, is effort expended to overcome or resist the natural. To behave naturally is to them tantamount to behaving as an animal. The Baining say, "We are human because we work." The tasks that make them human, in their view, are those of turning natural products (plants, animals, and babies) into human products (crops, livestock, and civilized human beings) through effortful work (cultivation, domestication, and disciplined childrearing). The Baining believe, quite correctly, that play is the natural activity of children, and precisely for that reason they do what they can to discourage or prevent it. They refer to children's play as "splashing in the mud," an activity of pigs, not appropriate for humans. They do not allow infants to crawl and explore on their own. When one tries to do so an adult picks it up and restrains it. Beyond infancy, children are encouraged or coerced to spend their days working and are often punished -- sometimes by such harsh means as shoving the child's hand into the fire -- for playing. On those occasions when Fajans did get an adult to talk about his or her childhood, the narrative was typically about the challenge of embracing work and overcoming the shameful desire to play. Part of the reason the Baining are reluctant to talk about themselves, apparently, derives from their strong sense of shame about their natural drives and desires. But maybe Americans are becoming more boring as our children's freedom to explore is curtailed:…" [Peter Gray's article is here: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201207/all-work-and-no-play-make-the-baining-the-dullest-culture-earth ]]]> culture via:lukeneff boredom boringness baining papuanewguinea psychology anthropology petergray 2012 parenting children stoicism allworknoplay play adderall jasonkottke kottke https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:1261e8c2852a/ - How We Will Read: Clay Shirky 2012-06-30T21:53:01+00:00 http://blog.findings.com/post/20527246081/how-we-will-read-clay-shirky robertogreco annotation ebooks publishing books media future howweread 2012 boredom clayshirky reading https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:b87a8f21165d/ A week of a student's electrodermal activity - Joi Ito's Web 2012-05-02T22:13:06+00:00 http://joi.ito.com/weblog/2012/04/30/a-week-of-a-stu.html robertogreco measurement deschooling unschooling learning yourbrainonschool brain boredom engagement sleeping 2012 joiito quantifiedself academia education https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:a5d5addeb124/