Jaron Lanier meets John Muir in Jenny Odell's HOW TO DO NOTHING, an action plan for political resistance to the attention economy.
Jenny Odell is an artist and writer who teaches at Stanford, has been an artist-in-residence at places like the San Francisco dump, Facebook, the Internet Archive, and the San Francisco Planning Department, and has exhibited her art all over the world. She lives in Oakland.
"She struck a hopeful nerve of possibility that I hadn’t felt in a
long time."—Jia Tolentino, THE NEW YORKER
"How to Do Nothing is genuinely instructive, elaborating a
practical philosophy to help us slow down and temporarily sidestep
the forces aligned against both our mental health and long-term
human survival. You can knock the hustle — and you
should."—Akiva Gottlieb, LOS ANGELES TIMES
"Approachable and incisive. . . . The book is clearly the work
of a socially conscious artist and writer who considers careful
attention to the rich variety of the world an antidote to the
addictive products and platforms that technology provides. . . .
[Odell] sails with capable ease between the Scylla and
Charybdis of subjectivity and arid theory with the relatable
humanity of her vision."—Nicholas Cannariato, THE WASHINGTON
POST
"The sentiment behind How to Do Nothing is one of defiance.”—Casey
Schwartz, THE NEW YORK TIMES
"An erudite and thoughtful narrative about the importance of
interiority and taking time to pay close attention to the spaces
around us."—Annie Vainshtein, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
"An eloquent argument against the cult of efficiency, and I felt
both consoled and invigorated by it."—Jennifer Szalai, THE NEW YORK
TIMES BOOK REVIEW
"The path to freedom lies within the covers of this book."—Lauren
Goode, WIRED
"How to Do Nothing mimics the experience of walking with a
perceptive and sensitive friend, the kind of person who makes you
feel, in your bones, that it’s a miraculous gift to be
alive."—Katie Bloom, THE SEATTLE TIMES
"Odell’s great strength as a writer is her ability to convey art’s
unique power without overestimating or misstating its social
impact. . . . Ultimately, what sets her book apart from self-help
is not a less quixotic set of demands but a more life-affirming
endgame."—Megan Marz, THE BAFFLER
"Thoughtful, compelling, and practical."—Clay Skipper, GQ
“This is a potentially subversive book. Affirming that we should
take more time offline for nurturing our own thoughts (and so our
own being) does not sound that new, but here it is so gracefully
articulated in irresistible arguments.”—Aurelio
Cianciotta, Neural
"Jenny Odell’s brilliant How to Do Nothing is the book we
all need to read now. With wonderful precision, passion, and
artfulness, Odell finds the language to meet this cultural moment.
She has written a joyful manifesto about resistance that is also an
eccentric and practical handbook on how to reclaim your colonized
and monetized attention."—Dana Spiotta, author of Innocents
and Others
“Self-help for the collectively minded, How to Do Nothing is as
thoughtful and morally serious as it is fun to read. This book will
change how you see the world.”—Malcolm Harris, author of Kids These
Days
“Your chaotic, fraught internal weather isn't an accident, it's
a business-model, and while 'thoughtful resistance' isn't
'productive,' Odell proves that it is
utterly necessary.”—Cory Doctorow, author
of Radicalized and Walkaway
“In a media and tech ecosystem simultaneously obsessed with
"digital detox" and building personal brands, How to Do
Nothing is a breath of fresh air grounding readers in the
complex, interdependent actual ecosystems of the physical world.
Jenny Odell writes with remarkable clarity and compassion. Each
chapter reads like going on a fascinating walk through a park in
conversation with an old friend (who happens to also be able to
tell you about every single bird in the park, which is awesome).
It's a book I already know I'll be returning to and referencing for
a long time.”—Ingrid Burrington, author of Networks of New York
“In How to do Nothing Jenny Odell breaks through the invisible yoke
that binds 21st century first-worlders to our app-driven devices.
With a thoughtful look at the attention economy, Odell’s book is a
self-help guide for re-learning how to look at the world. The book
braids threads of ancient philosophy together with contemporary
visual and technological culture, and weaves an original route to
re-wilding the mind. Wide-ranging and erudite, this book is also
entertaining, and brings the reader along with enthusiasm to
Odell's philosophy of “manifest dismantling.” —Megan Prelinger,
author of Inside the Machine: Art and Invention in the Electronic
Age
"Odell introduces the idea that within our world there are endless
other worlds; many of the alternatives sound much better. We need
only pay attention."—VICE'S Broadly
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