Does the End of Boredom Mean the End of Creativity?
I found these two essays posted around the same time on Arts and Letters Daily and thought they allowed for some interesting ideas and connections about “new media” to be developed when read together.
Carolyn Johnson’s “The Joy of Boredom” looks at how there has been a decline in boredom because of new technologies such as email, youtube, i-pods, and cell phones that allow people to constantly entertain themselves. Johnson feels this has left people with less time to just sit, think, and ponder because of this ability to always be doing something. Johnson notes that boredom is associated with creativity and worries that the loss of boredom will result in less creativity. This is an interesting idea and one that needs to be further explored, as Johnson calls for when she states that more psychology and sociology studies should be conducted regarding boredom and creativity in contemporary society. Should we be worried about this constant stimulation offered by new technologies or is this idea about boredom being romanticized?
Mark Edmundson’s “Dwelling in Possibilities” is another (long) essay that considers how new technologies (cell phones, the internet, laptops) are effecting society. Although there are many parts of Edmundson’s article that I disagree with, I do think he makes some interesting points in his attempt to understand how recent technologies are effecting current youth culture (or at least the primarily upper middle-class college youth culture he is exposed to on the campus of the University of Viriginia). Edmundson see’s the trend of the constantly busy and overextended (amphetamine-fueled) college student as a response to the endless possibilities (desires, narratives) that these technologies offer users in the age of terrorism. Students are in a rapid rush to try-it-all, at the expense of truly mastering anything, because of their fear of not having tomorrow. This is an interesting point to consider when coupled with the ideas about boredom in the other article.
So are these writers onto something or are these fears overstated? Is this technology really making Americans afraid of boredom, “numb”, and overextended because of constant stimulation and connectivity? If so, do policies and attitudes toward technological progress need to change?
Writer,
TheNelsMantra
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2 Responses to “Does the End of Boredom Mean the End of Creativity?”
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March 12th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Really interesting point about boredom and creativity. I wonder if people had similar fears as radio was being introduced into the home.
March 12th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
They certainly had similar fears regarding television, Lynn Spigel discusses how these fears began to be conceptualized in her work “Make Room for TV.” I found the observation in “New Media: A Critical Introduction” that radio was seen as more active and positive when it was male coded and viewed more suspiciously when it became part of
“domestic life.” Although I don’t buy the point regarding boredom and creativity at large, in fact I think technology often opens more spaces for creativity, I wonder if the gender associations of certain technologies is reflected in these criticisms.