Ivy League University Offers New Course: “Wasting Time on the Internet”
I kid you not. It’s an Internet addict’s dream, isn’t it? You get to waste time online, and you get university credits for it!
Next semester, the University of Pennsylvania will be having a course called Wasting Time on the Internet, which is going to be taught by Kenneth Goldsmith. This is the first time I’ve heard of him, but from what I have read, he is rather unconventional and yet effective. (Isn’t that the case for the best-loved professors?)
Goldsmith is a poet and founding editor of UbuWeb, teaches Poetics and Poetic Practice at the University of Pennsylvania, and is a Senior Editor of PennSound.
So what is Wasting Time on the Internet all about? It does what it says on the tin: students get to do whatever they do online when not in class (well, that might not be entirely accurate).
The course description reads:
We spend our lives in front of screens, mostly wasting time: checking social media, watching cat videos, chatting, and shopping. What if these activities — clicking, SMSing, status-updating, and random surfing — were used as raw material for creating compelling and emotional works of literature? Could we reconstruct our autobiography using only Facebook? Could we write a great novella by plundering our Twitter feed? Could we reframe the internet as the greatest poem ever written? Using our laptops and a wifi connection as our only materials, this class will focus on the alchemical recuperation of aimless surfing into substantial works of literature.
Ahhh…I see what you did there, Mr. Goldsmith. It’s brilliant, and it’s something that connects the current generation with the art of creating literature, albeit not in its conventional form.
I wish I could enlist in the class. Would you take this class?
