How to Do Nothing _ Jenny Odell

How to Do Nothing _ Jenny Odell 

'아무것도 하지 않는 법'이라는 제목으로 한국판으로 번역되어 있는 것을 봤고, 어디선가 이 책의 추천글을 또 발견했다. 불어로는 아직 번역이 되어 있지 않은 것 같았고 원서를 주문했다. 제목은 아무것도 하지 않는 법이지만 디지털세계에 저항하는, 실제 우리가 살고 있는 곳에 더 관심을 기울이자는 주장이 책의 중심이 되고 있었다. 작가는 아티스트이기도 해서 예술과 관련된 예시를 많이 들었다. 인용이 너무 많아서 작가 본인의 이야기가 더 있었으면 하는 아쉬움이 있기는 했지만 디지털 소셜네트워크보다 더 우리에게 중요한 것들이 무엇인지 몇 번이고 강조했다.

마침 나는 이 책을 읽었던 8월 한달동안 휴대폰을 최대한 안보고 생활을 하려는 다짐을 했었었다. 그도 그럴 것이 휴가가 시작되기 전 마지막 출근하는 주에 다들 일이 별로 없어서 회사에서 시간만 떼우고 있었는데 그런 애매한 시간에는 모든 사람들이 휴대폰을 보는 것이 당연시 되었다. 나는 차라리 그럴 시간에는 책을 읽고 싶었지만 어쩐지 책은 읽어서는 안되고 휴대폰의 스크린을 계속 스크롤 하는 것은 암묵적으로 허용되었다. 그러다보니 하루평균 휴대폰 사용량이 3시간을 넘어서는 기록을 하게 되는데 정신건강에도 안 좋았다. 어딘가 부정적인 생각이 계속 머릿속을 맴돌았다. 중요하지 않은 것들이 내 시간을 잡아먹었다는 것, 무수하게 쓸데없는 정보를 스쳤다는 것을 깨닫는 순간 더 부정적인 기분이 쓰나미처럼 몰려온다. 절대 갈 일이 없는 맛집들의 영상들, 절대 요리 하지 않을 요리 동영상들은 마술처럼 사람의 시선을 사로잡는다. 책에서 나오지만 (Scrolling through the feed, I can’t help but wonder: What am I supposed to thing of all this?) ???

그렇게 입력된 수많은 정보들은 알고리즘이라고 하지만 사실은 내 관심사도 아니었다. 얼마 전에 서점에서 우연히 집어든 아주 마음에 든 책이 있는데, 3년 동안 매일 같이 출퇴근 하면서 타고다닌 지하철 6호선의 Corvisart라는 지하철역의 이름이 나폴레옹의 의사 이름이었다는 내용이 나온다. 전혀 상상도 못했을 일이다. 별 것 아니지만 이 사소하고 재미있는 발견들이 난 더 좋았다. 제니오델이 건네던 생산적이지만 생산적이지 않은 일들로 삶을 채워가는 무수한 나날들의 기로에서. 

 

 

This isn’t a new idea, and it also applies over longer periods of time. Most people have, or have known someone who has, gone through some period of ‘’removal’’ that fundamentally changed their attitude to the world they returned to. Sometimes that’s occasioned by something terrible, like illness or loss, and sometimes it’s voluntary, but regardless, that pause in time is often the only thing that can precipitate change on a certain scale. p.10

 

The trainee epitomized Takala’s methode. As observed by a writer at Pumphouse Gallery, which showed her work in 2017, there is nothing inherently unusual about the notion of not working while at work; people commonly look at Facebook on their phones or seek other distractions during work hours. It was the image of utter inactivity that so galled Takala’s colleagues. ‘’Appearing as if you’re doing nothing is seen as a threat to the general working order of the company, creating a sens of the unknown.’’ they wrote, adding solemnly, ‘’The potential of nothing is everything.’’ p.64

 

If we believed that everything were merely a product of fate or disposition, Cicero reasons, no one would be accountable for anything and therefore there could be no justice. In today’s terms, we’d all just be algorithms. Furthermore, we’d have no reason to try to make ourselves better or different from our natural inclinations. p.72

 

The scroll was so long that what he showed was actually a tracking shot, a journey across a multifarious scene that is less an image that a collection of small moments: people lining up to enter a temple, people crossing a river in a small boat, people conversing under a tree. Behind them, the land receds, but to no particular point. The scroll’s narrative is excessive, open, and without direction. It recalls the text from a tourist plaque in Zion Canyon that forms the center of one of Hockney’s sprawling photo collage. The plaque reads: YOU MAKE THE PICTURE. p.100

 

Hockney, who defines looking as a ‘’positive act,’’ would have been pleased. For him, actual looking was a skill and a conscious decision that people rarely practiced; there was ‘’a lot to see’’ only if you were willing and able to see it. In this sense, what Hockney and countless other artists offer is a kind of attentional prosthesis. Such an offering assumes that the familiar and proximate environment is as deserving of this attention, if not more, that those hallowed objects we view in a museum. P.101

 

Even though i’ve lived in a city most of my adult life, in that moment I was floored by the density of life experience folded into a single city street. p.131

 

Compared to the algorithms that recommend friends to us based on instrumental qualities - things we like, things we’ve bought, friends in common - geographical proximity is different, placing us near people we have no ‘’obvious’’ instrumental reason to care about, who are neither family nor friends (nor, sometimes, even potential friends). I want to propose several reasons we should not only register, but care about and co-inhabit a reality with, the people who live around us being left out of our filter bubbles. And of course, I mean not only social media bubbles, but the filters we create with our own perception and non-perception, involving the kind of attention (or lack thereof) that I’ve described so far. p.133

 

Obviously, the bit of information we’re assailed with on Twitter and Facebook feeds are missing both of these kinds of context. Scrolling through the feed, I can’t help but wonder: What am I supposed to thing of all this? How am I supposed to thing of all this? I imagine different parts of my brain lighting up in a pattern that doesn’t make sense, that forecloses any possible understanding. Many things in there seem important, but the sum total is nonsense, and it produces not understanding but a dull and stupefying dread. p.159

 

Seen from the point of view of forward-pressing, productive time, this behavior would appear delinquent. I’d look like a drop out. But from the point of view of the place, I’d look like someone who was finally paying int attention. And from the point of view of myself, the person actually experiencing my life, and to whom I zill ultimately answer when I die - I would know that I spent that day on Earth. In moments like this, even the question itself of the say - without lifting my eyes from the things growing and creeping along the ground - ‘’I would prefer not to’’ p.185