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A batch of the best highlights from what Jim's read, .
Like science fiction writer Ted Chiang said in an interview with journalist Ezra Klein, “Most of our fears or anxieties about technology are best understood as fears or anxiety about how capitalism will use technology against us.” The challenge, then, is how to disentangle the two.
Take Back the Future!
Jasmine Sun
The first half of “doing nothing” is about disengaging from the attention economy; the other half is about reengaging with something else. That “something else” is nothing less than time and space, a possibility only once we meet each other there on the level of attention. Ultimately, against the placelessness of an optimized life spent online, I want to argue for a new “placefulness” that yields sensitivity and responsibility to the historical (what happened here) and the ecological (who and what lives, or lived, here).
How to Do Nothing
Jenny Odell
Clinging to suffering, paradoxically, is a way of trying to take care of ourselves. We’re convinced that the kernel of resolution will appear from somewhere inside the rubble of the problem. But usually the only thing that appears is more suffering…we’re left stuck in the rubble, scavenging for that unfindable gem of relief. So too, continually thinking about what hurts makes us feel that our pain matters, that it didn’t happen for no reason, and that it won’t be forgotten.
Can't Stop Thinking
Nancy Colier and Stephan Bodian
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