Evgeny Morozov: Two Cheers for Boredom : The New Yorker
extract :
On November 16,
1924, Siegfried Kracauer, a luminary in the literary world of the
Weimar Republic, published a feisty essay in the Frankfurter Zeitung.
Trained as an architect, Kracauer was an acute observer of modernity
and its impact on life in the city. He followed in the footsteps of his
onetime teacher Georg Simmel, the sociologist whose 1903 essay “The
Metropolis and Mental Life” argued that overstimulated urban dwellers
were prone to develop a “blasé attitude,” a coping mechanism that
blunted their ability to react to new sensations. Kracauer’s concerns
went beyond that. “People today who still have time for boredom and yet
are not bored are certainly just as boring as those who never get around
to being bored,” he wrote in the Zeitung. The bourgeoisie “are
pushed deeper and deeper into the hustle and bustle until eventually
they no longer know where their head is.”
Life in the modern city, with its cheap and ubiquitous entertainment,1924, Siegfried Kracauer, a luminary in the literary world of the
Weimar Republic, published a feisty essay in the Frankfurter Zeitung.
Trained as an architect, Kracauer was an acute observer of modernity
and its impact on life in the city. He followed in the footsteps of his
onetime teacher Georg Simmel, the sociologist whose 1903 essay “The
Metropolis and Mental Life” argued that overstimulated urban dwellers
were prone to develop a “blasé attitude,” a coping mechanism that
blunted their ability to react to new sensations. Kracauer’s concerns
went beyond that. “People today who still have time for boredom and yet
are not bored are certainly just as boring as those who never get around
to being bored,” he wrote in the Zeitung. The bourgeoisie “are
pushed deeper and deeper into the hustle and bustle until eventually
they no longer know where their head is.”
was partly to blame. The glow of street advertising hijacked people’s
spirits with the promise of cheap liquor and cigarettes, while movie
theatres created the illusion of “a life that belongs to no one and
exhausts everyone.” Radio listeners were in a state of “permanent
receptivity, constantly pregnant with London, the Eiffel Tower, and
Berlin,” their souls “badgered by the news hounds” so that “soon no one
can tell anymore who is the hunter and who is the hunted.” The
disorienting experience, Kracauer complained, is like “one of those
dreams provoked by an empty stomach”: . . .
