Jenny Odell: “Let’s take back the time”

It was the year 1930, the Great Depression destroyed the lives of millions of people, and the famous economist John Maynard Keynes in his Economic possibilities for our grandchildren he formulated what would become one of his most famous predictions. Within a hundred years, he said, technological progress would mean that there was no need to work more than 15 hours a week: the problem, more than the work, would have been at its best find an interesting way to spend all our free time. Today it is almost impossible to think that in 8 years such a vision could come true, and not only because in the last decades what we think we need to be happy has increased dramatically, bringing with it a myriad of professionals that Keynes would not even have. could conceive. Between growing inequalities, economic insecurity and the possibility of monetizing even one’s hobbies offered by digital platforms, a near future in which time is not money seems unimaginable. Spending some of our precious hours doing nothing “is just too expensive”.
It starts from this assumption Jenny Odell in his own essay, How to do nothing. Resist the attention economy (Hoepli). Born and raised in a California devoted to the cult of productivity, Odell dissects a present in which our attention – and therefore our time – is pulled from all sides, starting with the tech companies that want us to stay on their platforms for the longest. possible, whatever the cost. Although the title of the book is somewhat reminiscent of a self-help manual, it does not provide some generic advice on how to detoxify momentarily from social media, but a broader and more radical reflection on what it means to find space – and, again, time – to truly reflect on what life do we want to live and what relationships do we want to cultivate. The entire book is a call to resist the attention economy, deciding with greater awareness which activities to make room for in one’s life.

Is this a political message for you?
“Well, it’s definitely more political than a commercial self-help book, which is meant to help you feel more comfortable with the situation as it is, without trying to change it. use common sense: for example, is it political to think that a park has a value that cannot be articulated in capitalist terms? Does this make you an anti-capitalist? I had a moment of despair in 2016, and I began to wonder where this despair was coming from. And I kept asking myself these questions, which led me to explore an area that some would call political. “

Since you wrote the book 3 years ago, the pandemic has forced us to rely even more on technology. How has your thinking on the subject evolved?
“I wish I’d gone heavier on the attention economy. In the book I try to talk to the part of us that has free will, which has the power to make decisions, but it is also true that we have to face many things, now even more. If you are very stressed or don’t have a lot of free time, your life circumstances don’t make it easy to get into a contemplative state of mind. One thing I heard a lot from my readers was the fact that I had been describing a feeling they had had for a long time, perplexities that they had not been able to fully articulate. However, many have told me that they agree with what I am saying, but they have three children and a full-time job, or more jobs, and do not know how to reconcile. [l’idea di spendere il proprio tempo in modo più costruttivo] with their reality. It makes me very angry with the way the platforms are designed and the fact that all of our communications still have to go through them, especially when you are away from other people and trying to bond. They leverage elementary human dynamics to keep us on their sites. For me the crucial point is: who manages these spaces? What are their goals in the way they are designed? I have no problem with the idea that people are able to communicate over great distances with other people who are not close to them. In some types of communities, social networks have historically been very useful. But I have a problem with people being forced to do this on platforms optimized for something very different. I love what some people have been able to do on Instagram, but I’d love not to have to see advertisements when I look at their work, or when I’m trying to bond with another person. The ideal would be to create networks in which you were respected and respected others, where you have meaningful exchanges and come to new conclusions, together. But for me, a lot of what’s happening on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter is the opposite: people leave the space feeling more alienated, more lonely, more scared than they were when they arrived. And then they come back: this is the mechanism of exploitation “.

Are you still on social networks?
“I’m in a weird in-between state. I’m on Instagram and Twitter but I have a very strict rule: I don’t look at feeds. If I have to go to Instagram, I’ll see the first photo, but I won’t keep looking at the rest. I’ll check messages and notifications or go to see a friend’s profile if I wonder what he’s up to, ma they are anti-feed. This story started with a Chrome extension called Facebook News Feed Eradicator, which deletes the home, and once I removed that I realized I had no reason to be there. I believe that try to make social media functions boring: my life is so much better and it has really given me the space to think. Now, every time I go back I feel like I have to put on a fireproof suit first. And when I’m there I can’t wait to leave. “

Photo: Jenny Odell Artist and writer. She was born in San Francisco, she grew up in Cupertino, graduated from Berkeley in 2008. Since 2013 she has taught Internet art and physical / digital design at Stanford. University.