How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

Synopsis of How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

«How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy» is the critical essay by Jenny Odell, published by Melville House in paperback (256 pages, in English).

Artist and critic Jenny Odell examines how addictive technology commodifies our attention and turns us into data producers. Against this economy, she proposes «doing nothing» as a practice of resistance: reclaiming the ability to observe, converse, and inhabit the world without producing. A defence of attention as a political resource.

It was a New York Times bestseller, appeared on the year-end book lists of Time, The New Yorker, and NPR, and Barack Obama included it among his favourite books of 2019.

For readers interested in the critique of technology, surveillance capitalism, and the role of attention in contemporary life.