Students at the University of Pennsylvania will be able to study “wasting time on the internet” as a degree level course from 2015 onwards.
For many years, the internet has been a fountain of all the procrastination material students could ever need, but now, for the first time, some students will be able to study the power of the internet in terms of wasting time.
The course is being offered by the University’s Department of English to students with an English or Creative Writing major, and is being run by Professor Kenneth Goldsmith. Prof. Goldsmith is perhaps best known for his attempt to print off the entirety of the internet.
Students enrolled on the course will have a three-hour seminar each week where they will be sat in front of a computer, unable to converse with each other in a verbal form, restricted to doing everything over the internet – on social media and chat rooms. The raw materials collected from their in-class interactions over the internet will be collected together to create ‘substantial works of literature’.
They will also be required to read texts from Raymond Williams, John Cage, and Betty Friedan, amongst others, about the history of wasting time.
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Source: Huffington Post