Absorbed, non-distracted time is required for genuine innovation and creative work
Evidence
We’ve grown so accustomed to repetition and recycling that we no longer notice them. Yet it’s no surprise that this is the case. New cultural production requires a use of time that communicative capitalism is profoundly hostile towards. Most social energy is sucked into the vortex of late-capitalist labour and its vast simulation of productivity. Innovation depends upon an absorbed (rather than distracted) drift; but it is increasingly difficult to muster the attentional resources necessary for such immersion. Cyberspatial urgencies — the smartphone’s flashing red light, the siren call of its alert — function like trance-inhibitors or alarm clocks that keep waking us out of collective dreaming. In these conditions, intellectual work can only be undertaken on a short-term basis. Only prisoners have time to read, and if you want to engage in a twenty-year-long research project funded by the state, you will have to kill someone. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1636
Categorization
- XREF: Builds on the sustained body of reading about attention, silence, and deep work; the smartphone-as-alarm-clock resonates with the silence/attention material already curated. — connects to: Artistic invention requires deliberate non-market effort — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 850; Sustained attention reveals a preexisting world that productivity logic cannot see. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 436; Pausing and relaxing can enhance creativity and lead to epiphanies. — Dan Harris, 10 percent Happier, 911 (+2 more)
- APHORISMS: ‘Only prisoners have time to read’ functions as a grim aphorism about the institutional conditions of genuine intellectual work.
Broader Connections
- Creative maturation requires slow shadow-time beyond the reactive instant
#corroborates(0.90) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1771 - Artistic invention requires deliberate non-market effort
#corroborates(0.85) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 850 - Sustained attention reveals a preexisting world that productivity logic cannot see.
#expands(0.82) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 436 - Pausing and relaxing can enhance creativity and lead to epiphanies.
#expands(0.75) — Dan Harris, 10 percent Happier, 911