Wasting Time on the Internet

Using clear, readable prose, conceptual artist and poet Kenneth Goldsmiths manifesto shows how our time on the internet is not really wasted but is quite productive and creative as he puts the experience in its proper theoretical and philosophical context.Kenneth Goldsmith wants you to rethink the internet. Many people feel guilty after spending hours watching cat videos or clicking link after link after link. But Goldsmith sees that wasted time differently. Unlike old media, the internet demands active engagementand its actually making us more social, more creative, even more productive.When Goldsmith, a renowned conceptual artist and poet, introduced a class at the University of Pennsylvania called Wasting Time on the Internet, he nearly broke the internet. The New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Slate, Vice, Time, CNN, the Telegraph, and many more, ran articles expressing their shock, dismay, and, ultimately, their curiosity. Goldsmiths ideas struck a nerve, because they are brilliantly subversiveand endlessly shareable.In Wasting Time on the Internet, Goldsmith expands upon his provocative insights, contending that our digital lives are remaking human experience. When were wasting time, were actually creating a culture of collaboration. Were reading and writing moreand quite differently. And were turning concepts of authority and authenticity upside-down. The internet puts us in a state between deep focus and subconscious flow, a state that Goldsmith argues is ideal for creativity. Where that creativity takes us will be one of the stories of the twenty-first century.Wide-ranging, counterintuitive, engrossing, unpredictablelike the internet itselfWasting Time on the Internet is the manifesto you didnt know you needed.