Wish I Were Here, Mark Kingwell
Wish I Were Here, Mark Kingwell
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Wish I Were Here
Boredom and the Interface

Author: Mark Kingwell

Narrator: Adam Lofbomm

Unabridged: 5 hr 58 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 04/30/2019


Synopsis

Are you bored of the endless scroll of your social media feed? Do you swipe left before considering the human being whose face you just summarily rejected? Do you skim articles on your screen in search of intellectual stimulation that never arrives? If so, this book is the philosophical lifeline you have been waiting for. Offering a timely meditation on the profound effects of constant immersion in technology, also known as the Interface, Wish I Were Here draws on philosophical analysis of boredom and happiness to examine the pressing issues of screen addiction and the lure of online outrage. Without moralizing, Mark Kingwell takes seriously the possibility that current conditions of life and connection are creating hollowed-out human selves, divorced from their own external world. While scrolling, swiping, and clicking suggest purposeful action, such as choosing and connecting with others, Kingwell argues that repeated flicks of the finger provide merely the shadow of meaning, by reducing us to scattered data fragments, Twitter feeds, Instagram posts, shopping preferences, and text trends captured by algorithms. Written in accessible language that references both classical philosophers and contemporary critics, Wish I Were Here turns to philosophy for a cure to the widespread unease that something is amiss in modern waking life.

About Mark Kingwell

Mark Kingwell is professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto and a contributing editor of Harper's Magazine, and has written for publications ranging from Adbusters and the New York Times to the Journal of Philosophy and Auto Racing Digest. Among his books of political and cultural theory are the national bestsellers Better Living, The World We Want, and Concrete Reveries.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Raj on November 12, 2019

I heard an incredibly insightful podcast interview with the author (on CBC Spark) on the nature of boredom and the endless scroll so I was really looking forward to the book. The book was largely disappointing. It contained the same insights I heard in 15 minutes, but included hundreds of pages of m......more

Goodreads review by David on October 27, 2019

I don't regret by any means the reading of this book, but I do retract an assessment I made mid-way through, something to the effect that Kingwell provides a more policy-relevant set of observations about the Current (socioeconomic) Arrangement, than does Yuval Noah Harari in 21 Lessons for the 21st......more

Goodreads review by ManMothz on May 17, 2020

So the problem is that the modern form of boredom is when the interface of a technology replaces the actual desire to use that technology for it's desired end: searching for a show on Netflix becomes the primary activity of using Netflix. We can construe this as harmful because our desire to use the......more

Goodreads review by Harrison on November 15, 2019

part one is where the real philosophy lies, though it is largely summative. the rest is a series of meandering detours through the tech-inflected culture issues of today, justified by kingwell's invocation of adorno's politicization of boredom. clearly intended for a mass audience, the book I think......more

Goodreads review by Gus on April 28, 2019

I actually don’t fit in with the mainstream culture because I still read widely, deeply and critically. It is difficult in today’s culture to have conversations with people when they don’t know anything outside of the posts on their social media feeds. I rarely meet anyone these days who has read an......more