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3.73 AVERAGE
3.73 AVERAGE
Might be 5 stars but I listened to it and ironically, considering the actual topic of the book, the narrator sounds like she could be computer generated, which was distracting. Need to get my hands on a print copy. I really liked it other than the narrator (who google assures me is a live actress), and chapter 6 kind of blew my mind. I’ve been trying to describe my personal issues with social media for years, and it turns out there’s a name for it: context collapse. I loved and still love sharing on the internet when I know who my audience is and isn’t. Sharing when it could be seen by anyone anyone from my mom to my high school crush to my politically adversarial neighbor to some near strangers who friended me because they liked a comment on a mutual friend’s post to that professional acquaintance who became an influencer and just wants my likes to a complete stranger just stresses me out. Lots more good and relatable stuff in this book.
This book is relevant and full with food for thought, some coming out of Odell’s own reflections and many resulting from her ceaseless citing. I get it, the feeling that you could not say it better than these other people did, but at times it made me consider if there’s such thing as “citation density”, and whether there might be a saturation point before considering a text its own thing rather than a compendium of curated citations. But that was just at times… Also at times there were these statements that plainly bothered me. To say that something was harmonious (I don't think I read that specific word in the book) with little or no example is not saying much. She can say whatever she wants. Me too. When we go beyond fiction, I appreciate when these statements are substantiated, and not enough citations could distract me from it on occasions. For example, I was looking forward to the chapter on communes, a topic I find interesting but haven't covered on my own. Mentioning some failed examples is not enough of an argument to base her statement that retreating from society is not a valid option. To be fair, this was not her only argument, but other powerful and interesting points were not even covered, like how ecosystems to which you may retreat can still be threatened by the society you’re trying to escape. In any case, I felt that chapter didn't come together seamlessly.
Then there’s that “too US-centric” aspect of the book. Maybe it’d be more accurate to say too “California-centric”, but I think to the extent that most of the citations concerned writers and projects from the US (not only the California region) we could agree on “US-centric”. Now, the reader may forgive this, given her emphasis on bioregionalism and the fact that this centrism does not interfere with the reader’s ability to take the message. But still, the attention economy is not a US-only problem. I would have appreciated seeing more of the world as part of the analysis.
Odell is fine, but judging by this book alone, not a writer I can fall in love with.
Still, I’m giving this book 4 stars, so there’s obviously some good in it, starting with its relevance and actionable suggestions. I have been talking about this topic for months now: how our collective attention feels scattered all over the place, wondering how it affects our thoughts process and how certain time off must be important for reasoning and thought, been bothered by the information overload and how people on social media and even workplaces so blatantly ignore basic modern-day concepts on how our brains work. To find all of this here, with a focus on time, the self and the incredible value of physical and mental space and communities was in many ways a beautiful extended conversation, that I’d like to think many more people out there are having. But if you’re already having (or had) these conversations or thinking about these topics, maybe there’s not really a point in reading this particular book… Beyond that, I got to learn a few things and see others from new angles, like the history of Diogenes (apparently a committed disruptor of the conventions he found troublesome in this time) or Odell’s metaphor on how we can produce infinite “renders” of reality. I also enjoyed her imagery a lot, which I often found very moving, like when she says that “a community in the thrall of the attention economy feels like an industrial farm, where our jobs are to grow straight and tall, side-by-side, producing faithfully, without ever touching.”
My favorite excerpts:
Emphasis mine
(And here's a Chinese Nail House!)
Then there’s that “too US-centric” aspect of the book. Maybe it’d be more accurate to say too “California-centric”, but I think to the extent that most of the citations concerned writers and projects from the US (not only the California region) we could agree on “US-centric”. Now, the reader may forgive this, given her emphasis on bioregionalism and the fact that this centrism does not interfere with the reader’s ability to take the message. But still, the attention economy is not a US-only problem. I would have appreciated seeing more of the world as part of the analysis.
Odell is fine, but judging by this book alone, not a writer I can fall in love with.
Still, I’m giving this book 4 stars, so there’s obviously some good in it, starting with its relevance and actionable suggestions. I have been talking about this topic for months now: how our collective attention feels scattered all over the place, wondering how it affects our thoughts process and how certain time off must be important for reasoning and thought, been bothered by the information overload and how people on social media and even workplaces so blatantly ignore basic modern-day concepts on how our brains work. To find all of this here, with a focus on time, the self and the incredible value of physical and mental space and communities was in many ways a beautiful extended conversation, that I’d like to think many more people out there are having. But if you’re already having (or had) these conversations or thinking about these topics, maybe there’s not really a point in reading this particular book… Beyond that, I got to learn a few things and see others from new angles, like the history of Diogenes (apparently a committed disruptor of the conventions he found troublesome in this time) or Odell’s metaphor on how we can produce infinite “renders” of reality. I also enjoyed her imagery a lot, which I often found very moving, like when she says that “a community in the thrall of the attention economy feels like an industrial farm, where our jobs are to grow straight and tall, side-by-side, producing faithfully, without ever touching.”
My favorite excerpts:
Emphasis mine
Unless we are vigilant, the current design of much of our technology will block us every step of the way, deliberately creating false targets for self-reflection, curiosity, and a desire to belong to a community.
I see people caught up not just in notifications but in a mythology of productivity and progress, unable not only to rest but simply to see where they are.
To resist in place is to make oneself into a shape that cannot so easily be appropriated by a capitalist value system. To do this means refusing the frame of reference: in this case, a frame of reference in which value is determined by productivity, the strength of one's career and individual entrepreneurship. It means embracing and trying to inhabit somewhat fuzzier or blobbier ideas: of maintenance as productivity, of the importance of nonverbal communication, and of the mere experience of life as the highest goal. It means recognizing and celebrating a form of itself that changes over time, exceeds algorithmic description and whose identity doesn't always stop at the boundary of the individual.
It's in the realm of poetics that we learn how to encounter. Significantly, these encounters are not optimized to “empower” us by making us happier or more productive. In fact, they may actually completely unsettle all the priorities of the productive self and even the boundaries between self and others. Rather than providing us with drop-down menus, they confront us with serious questions, the answering of which may change us irreversibly.
[...] when I worry about the estuary’s diversity, I am also worrying about my own diversity —about having the best, most alive parts of myself paved over by a ruthless logic of use. When I worry about the birds, I am also worrying about watching all my possible selves go extinct. And when I worry that no one will see the value of these murky waters, it is also a worry that I will be stripped of my own unusable parts, my own mysteries, and my own depths.
(And here's a Chinese Nail House!)
informative
slow-paced
I’m surprised that a book about the over consumption of our attention has 0 insight into cognitive psychology.
Likeable and logical
I enjoyed this. The writer was likeable and never demanded. Suggestions and personal experiences of just stepping away from the device and really looking and listening to what is around you. It isn't about doing nothing, but choosing to do things offline with more attention. I looked around more on my walk this morning and sat a little longer in the park. It was lovely.
I enjoyed this. The writer was likeable and never demanded. Suggestions and personal experiences of just stepping away from the device and really looking and listening to what is around you. It isn't about doing nothing, but choosing to do things offline with more attention. I looked around more on my walk this morning and sat a little longer in the park. It was lovely.
"How to do Nothing" is a take on a capitalist worldview where "nothing" is anything that won't make money.
With social media, email, cell phones, and the gig economy permitting every moment to be financially productive (the "attention economy"), how can we stop? And if we can, what exactly does "doing nothing" entail?
For Odell, nothing's a bit loosely defined and vaguely Buddhist. In part, doing nothing is "to take a protective stance toward ourselves, each other, and whatever is left that makes us human". Partially, it's "bodily" things that ground us in our immediate physical and sensory surroundings. These things – meditation, birdwatching – pull us out of introspection into the wonders of the present. However, the attention economy is so omnipresent that for Odell, pulling away from clickbait to smell the roses is a form of revolution.
Odell's argument meanders through utopian movements, ancient philosophers and modern psychometric testing, but her basic proposal is this: that all of us train ourselves to be more attentive to the ways we are being manipulated by algorithmic systems. For Odell, the solution is not to design more ethical algorithms (which ultimately retrenches the existing capitalist system). Instead, by retraining our own attention, we can refuse the terms of the system entirely. The latter part of the book explores how attention can be a first step to solving a host of problems–social, spiritual, and ecological.
Only at the very end of the book does she revisit the actual stuff of social/digital media. She singles out "context collapse" as a major failure of existing digital media. First, because there is no physical space for the information, there's no "spatial" context that allows a speaker to nuance their message for a particular group. Second, the overwhelming overload of information destroys "temporal" context. This leads into an overview of alternative and cooperative-run social networks that might address these problems, by (for instance) focusing on information of a particular community.
The structure of the book is a little rambling and repetitive, but overall I liked the writing and I liked the tour of many different ideas (from art history, to political history, to technology and nature writing). Odell's arguments, however, seem a little muddled to me. Why not just focus the entire book on attention, instead arriving there rejecting other forms of resistance? Once Odell settles on "changing attention" as the solution, I find it a little too hard to argue with her main ideas.
I certainly agree that a first step to solving a problem is to attend to it (unless, I suppose, you're very lucky). Still, "paying attention" doesn't strike me as a particularly prescriptive approach to solving the problems of the attention economy. In fact, it seems almost dangerous to me that Odell encourages us NOT to get off Facebook or advocate for less-invasive algorithms, but instead to meditate or birdwatch.
Sometimes Odell's use of "attention" seems suspiciously loose Does it really make sense to conflate the experience of noticing new details (which you might have after experiencing some weird art) with the detail-level visual attention studied by scientists? Odell notes that the loss of native cultures that cultivated sweet grass have caused the plant to struggle, but it seems a bit too easy to say that sweet grass is going extinct from lack of attention.
I wanted to like this book–it's a very sweet, heart-felt book by someone earnestly working through a serious social problem. It's also a noble attempt to synthesize memoir, protest book, self-help, art history, nature and tech writing. Unfortunately, it amounts to a bland mish-mash.
With social media, email, cell phones, and the gig economy permitting every moment to be financially productive (the "attention economy"), how can we stop? And if we can, what exactly does "doing nothing" entail?
For Odell, nothing's a bit loosely defined and vaguely Buddhist. In part, doing nothing is "to take a protective stance toward ourselves, each other, and whatever is left that makes us human". Partially, it's "bodily" things that ground us in our immediate physical and sensory surroundings. These things – meditation, birdwatching – pull us out of introspection into the wonders of the present. However, the attention economy is so omnipresent that for Odell, pulling away from clickbait to smell the roses is a form of revolution.
Odell's argument meanders through utopian movements, ancient philosophers and modern psychometric testing, but her basic proposal is this: that all of us train ourselves to be more attentive to the ways we are being manipulated by algorithmic systems. For Odell, the solution is not to design more ethical algorithms (which ultimately retrenches the existing capitalist system). Instead, by retraining our own attention, we can refuse the terms of the system entirely. The latter part of the book explores how attention can be a first step to solving a host of problems–social, spiritual, and ecological.
Only at the very end of the book does she revisit the actual stuff of social/digital media. She singles out "context collapse" as a major failure of existing digital media. First, because there is no physical space for the information, there's no "spatial" context that allows a speaker to nuance their message for a particular group. Second, the overwhelming overload of information destroys "temporal" context. This leads into an overview of alternative and cooperative-run social networks that might address these problems, by (for instance) focusing on information of a particular community.
The structure of the book is a little rambling and repetitive, but overall I liked the writing and I liked the tour of many different ideas (from art history, to political history, to technology and nature writing). Odell's arguments, however, seem a little muddled to me. Why not just focus the entire book on attention, instead arriving there rejecting other forms of resistance? Once Odell settles on "changing attention" as the solution, I find it a little too hard to argue with her main ideas.
I certainly agree that a first step to solving a problem is to attend to it (unless, I suppose, you're very lucky). Still, "paying attention" doesn't strike me as a particularly prescriptive approach to solving the problems of the attention economy. In fact, it seems almost dangerous to me that Odell encourages us NOT to get off Facebook or advocate for less-invasive algorithms, but instead to meditate or birdwatch.
Sometimes Odell's use of "attention" seems suspiciously loose Does it really make sense to conflate the experience of noticing new details (which you might have after experiencing some weird art) with the detail-level visual attention studied by scientists? Odell notes that the loss of native cultures that cultivated sweet grass have caused the plant to struggle, but it seems a bit too easy to say that sweet grass is going extinct from lack of attention.
I wanted to like this book–it's a very sweet, heart-felt book by someone earnestly working through a serious social problem. It's also a noble attempt to synthesize memoir, protest book, self-help, art history, nature and tech writing. Unfortunately, it amounts to a bland mish-mash.
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
This book is just amazing. I actually picked it up thinking it was about how evil corporate online platforms like twitter, facebook or instagram are. I figured it would talk about digital detoxing. She basically touches very lightly on these ideas, before launching into some WAYYYY more engaging and troubling places. It's a really dense book actually, although not hard to read, and I can see myself returning to it in future. Among the things she discusses--how our culture's obsession with individualism and now 'personal branding' has isolated us from each other and ourselves; what it means to engage in community outside of online spaces, art projects about 'doing nothing'--like performance art by people like Zhuang Zhou (who just remained in a 'cell' for a year, with no books or a window, just getting food delivered and waste eliminated--just to think and experience doing nothing), or John Cage (who made a recording of nothing, and has a symphony of just ambient noise), to meditations on public space and how the corrosion and elimination of public space corresponds to the erosion of the labour movement (omg this is so good and interesting); to 'doing nothing' as an act of political resistance; and thinking about how disengaging from online space frees up time to be a more mindful community member and inhabitant of the earth--she gets into regional biodiversity, and talks about how the interdependence of all creatures on earth is obscured by our current cultural moment of immeidate gratification and amazon---I can't say enought good things about this book. There's an early chapter about back to the land and drop out cults, that talks about what went wrong with many of these 1960's/70s movement (infighting mainly, and lack of a stable coherent group agenda). Somehow she ends on a high note, looking at a community memory project from Oakland that reminds us that even as everything seems to be deteriorating, the story of humanity is a story of change and flux, and basically we still have the opportunity every day to make better choices. I loved this book. Excellent!
challenging
hopeful
informative
slow-paced
Man, this was a bonkers read out of time...written in 2019, it feels SO 2019. Wild how something can end up being so dated just 5 or so years after publishing.
Some of the thoughts and ideas in this book are really fascinating and I could see how they would have been a balm in the crazy days of Trump's first-term, pre-COVID. Reading it today, a couple of months in to the whiplash of Trump's second term, was a bit depressing. Whereas 2019 was absolutely frenetic and anxious, thus a great breeding ground for Odell's thoughts, 2025 has seen that energy replaced by a savage meanness. I don't know what Odell's intentional connected communities look like in this version of the world.
Glad I read it, but I believe I would have gotten more out of it if I'd only read it earlier.
Some of the thoughts and ideas in this book are really fascinating and I could see how they would have been a balm in the crazy days of Trump's first-term, pre-COVID. Reading it today, a couple of months in to the whiplash of Trump's second term, was a bit depressing. Whereas 2019 was absolutely frenetic and anxious, thus a great breeding ground for Odell's thoughts, 2025 has seen that energy replaced by a savage meanness. I don't know what Odell's intentional connected communities look like in this version of the world.
Glad I read it, but I believe I would have gotten more out of it if I'd only read it earlier.
hopeful
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced