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Wish I Were Here: Boredom and the Interface
Are you bored of the endless scroll of your social media feed? Do you swipe left before considering the human being whose face you just summarily rejected? Do you skim articles on your screen in search of intellectual stimulation that never arrives? If so, this book is the philosophical lifeline you have been waiting for. Offering a timely meditation on the profound effects of constant immersion in technology, also known as the Interface, Wish I Were Here draws on philosophical analysis of boredom and happiness to examine the pressing issues of screen addiction and the lure of online outrage. Without moralizing, Mark Kingwell takes seriously the possibility that current conditions of life and connection are creating hollowed-out human selves, divorced from their own external world. While scrolling, swiping, and clicking suggest purposeful action, such as choosing and connecting with others, Kingwell argues that repeated flicks of the finger provide merely the shadow of meaning, by reducing us to scattered data fragments, Twitter feeds, Instagram posts, shopping preferences, and text trends captured by algorithms. Written in accessible language that references both classical philosophers and contemporary critics, Wish I Were Here turns to philosophy for a cure to the widespread unease that something is amiss in modern waking life.
206 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2019
15 people are currently reading
179 people want to read
About the author
Mark Kingwell
62 books57 followersMark Gerald Kingwell B.A, M.Litt, M.Phil, PhD, D.F.A. (born March 1, 1963) is a Canadian philosopher who is currently professor of philosophy and associate chair at the University of Toronto's Department of Philosophy. Kingwell is a fellow of Trinity College and a Senior Fellow of Massey College. He specialises in theories of politics and culture.
Kingwell has published twelve different books, most notably, A Civil Tongue: Justice, Dialogue, and the Politics of Pluralism, which was awarded the Spitz Prize for political theory in 1997. In 2000 Kingwell received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, for contributions to theory and criticism. He has held visiting posts at various institutions including: Cambridge University, University of California at Berkeley, and City University of New York where he held the title of Weissman Distinguished Professor of Humanities.
He studied at the University of Toronto, editing The Varsity through 1983 to 1984 and the University of Toronto Review from 84-85. He received his BA degree from the University of St. Michael's College with High Distinction in 1985, his MLitt degree from Edinburgh University in 1987, and both his M.Phil and PhD degrees from Yale University in 1989 and 1991 respectively. He was married to Gail Donaldson in 1988. The marriage ended in divorce in 2004.
Kingwell is a contributing editor to Harper's Magazine, the literary quarterly Descant, the political monthly This Magazine and the Globe and Mail books section. He was also a drinks columnist for the men's magazine Toro. He was formerly a columnist for the National Post, and a contributing editor of Saturday Night. He frequently appears on television and radio, often on the CBC, and is well known for his appearance in the documentary film The Corporation. He has delivered, among others, the George Grant, Harold Innis, Marx Wartofsky and Larkin-Stuart memorial lectures.
Kingwell’s work has been translated into ten languages, and he lectures to academic and popular audiences around the world. From 2001 to 2004, he was chair of the Institute for Contemporary Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum. His work on philosophy, art, and architecture has appeared in many leading academic journals and magazines, including The Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Forum, Ethics, Political Theory, and the Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities, the New York Times and The New York Times Magazine, Utne Reader, Adbusters, the Walrus, Harvard Design Magazine,Canadian Art, Azure, Toronto Life, the Globe and Mail, and the National Post.
Kingwell is one of two University of Toronto professors teaching a first year philosophy course entitled Introduction to Philosophy. Kingwell teaches his class in Victoria College's Isabel Bader Theatre, with a class size of around 700 students. He has also been part of the University of Trinity College's TrinityOne program, for which he taught a seminar class entitled Ethics and the Creative Imagination.
He describes himself as a social democrat and a "recovering Catholic". According to the Canadian Who's Who 2006, he also enjoys running, baseball, basketball, jazz, films and pop music. He has two brothers: a younger brother named Sean Kingwell and an older brother named Steven Kingwell.
Kingwell has published twelve different books, most notably, A Civil Tongue: Justice, Dialogue, and the Politics of Pluralism, which was awarded the Spitz Prize for political theory in 1997. In 2000 Kingwell received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, for contributions to theory and criticism. He has held visiting posts at various institutions including: Cambridge University, University of California at Berkeley, and City University of New York where he held the title of Weissman Distinguished Professor of Humanities.
He studied at the University of Toronto, editing The Varsity through 1983 to 1984 and the University of Toronto Review from 84-85. He received his BA degree from the University of St. Michael's College with High Distinction in 1985, his MLitt degree from Edinburgh University in 1987, and both his M.Phil and PhD degrees from Yale University in 1989 and 1991 respectively. He was married to Gail Donaldson in 1988. The marriage ended in divorce in 2004.
Kingwell is a contributing editor to Harper's Magazine, the literary quarterly Descant, the political monthly This Magazine and the Globe and Mail books section. He was also a drinks columnist for the men's magazine Toro. He was formerly a columnist for the National Post, and a contributing editor of Saturday Night. He frequently appears on television and radio, often on the CBC, and is well known for his appearance in the documentary film The Corporation. He has delivered, among others, the George Grant, Harold Innis, Marx Wartofsky and Larkin-Stuart memorial lectures.
Kingwell’s work has been translated into ten languages, and he lectures to academic and popular audiences around the world. From 2001 to 2004, he was chair of the Institute for Contemporary Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum. His work on philosophy, art, and architecture has appeared in many leading academic journals and magazines, including The Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Forum, Ethics, Political Theory, and the Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities, the New York Times and The New York Times Magazine, Utne Reader, Adbusters, the Walrus, Harvard Design Magazine,Canadian Art, Azure, Toronto Life, the Globe and Mail, and the National Post.
Kingwell is one of two University of Toronto professors teaching a first year philosophy course entitled Introduction to Philosophy. Kingwell teaches his class in Victoria College's Isabel Bader Theatre, with a class size of around 700 students. He has also been part of the University of Trinity College's TrinityOne program, for which he taught a seminar class entitled Ethics and the Creative Imagination.
He describes himself as a social democrat and a "recovering Catholic". According to the Canadian Who's Who 2006, he also enjoys running, baseball, basketball, jazz, films and pop music. He has two brothers: a younger brother named Sean Kingwell and an older brother named Steven Kingwell.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 13, 2019
I heard an incredibly insightful podcast interview with the author (on CBC Spark) on the nature of boredom and the endless scroll so I was really looking forward to the book.
The book was largely disappointing. It contained the same insights I heard in 15 minutes, but included hundreds of pages of meandering academese that often descended into standard left wing rants.
Good book for a skim if you can pinpoint the good parts.
The book was largely disappointing. It contained the same insights I heard in 15 minutes, but included hundreds of pages of meandering academese that often descended into standard left wing rants.
Good book for a skim if you can pinpoint the good parts.
October 27, 2019
I don't regret by any means the reading of this book, but I do retract an assessment I made mid-way through, something to the effect that Kingwell provides a more policy-relevant set of observations about the Current (socioeconomic) Arrangement, than does Yuval Noah Harari in 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.
Spoiler alert for those looking for specific policy proposals: on page 146, just 3 pages from the end of this short book, Kingwell writes "Are there collective solutions here? I honestly cannot say."
As another reviewer of the above-mentioned Harari book memorably said (in total), "Well, Fuck."
But my disappointment with the lack of a strong summation is well-tempered by the stunning insights that I gained along the way. I became aware of Kingwell decades ago, early in his career, but I lost track of his work during my non-reading years. I am reminded now that reading Kingwell is akin to drinking from a fire-hose, or perhaps, chugging some intoxicating liquor. Kingwell is a philosopher; as such, he puts current events and current socio-techno context in a theoretical framework without troubling over-much about delineating the trends that got us here - as a historian might. Kingwell's genius is to be a popularizer of philosophy: distilling the thought of others, and providing his own thought, in an accessible manner that is (mostly) stripped of jargon and abstruse theoretical framing.
Having lauded MK for accessibility, I must also add that I had to look up several words in the course of reading. The prospective reader ought to know the following: etiology, semiotics, immiserating, cathaxis, elision, hermeneutic, reified, ensorcellment (come on, that is basically a French word), oneiric. Also, by page 32 he has already referenced Heidegger, Schopenhauer, Adorno, Wittgenstein, Plato, Kierkegaard, Hegel, Nietzsche, and others. So it's like a cool lake: it's fine, once you get immersed.
Having established several existing philosophical views of boredom, MK argues for the existence of a new form: "Neoliberal boredom". "Boredom is now a natural extension of the unease and restlessness generated in the economic sphere, everywhere exacerbated by upgrade imperatives, frenzied claims concerning speed and satisfaction, and perhaps worst, a constant generation of happiness-destroying envy for a form of existence that always seems to be elsewhere, enjoyed by someone else, or just past the horizon of the present in a future that never arrives." (You see? That is the sort of sentence that just smacks me in the face like a wet salmon and leaves me agog.)
MK coins the (capitalized) term "The Interface" to describe "the narrow way in which the user experiences himself or herself through the specific mechanism of restless choosing." (Think: swipe-left, scrolling through lists, etc: the things you do on your phone). "The promises of the Interface [ie, content] are a sly seduction... Neoliberal boredom means not just the peculiar boredom of the Interface consumed in place of the content, but the distinct experience of subjective emplacement associated with that consumption - a species of imprisonment and lurking addiction in what turns out to be, indeed, rabid self-consumption."
MK connects these dots of The Interface and "neoliberal boredom" with current politics: "The Interface is implicated in the breakdown of truth as a governing norm because it casts everything in a gray zone of zero accountability. By the time a falsehood has been noted, we are already three turns along in the cycle. And the cycle never stops."
Quite interestingly, MK marks the progress of the "Western philosophical project". In what he calls the "high modern" phase, thinkers perceived a "duty of exposure": everyday society works to maintain illusions that serve the interests of the Current Arrangement. The duty of exposure reveals this shell game of falsity by leveraging penetrating insight... this is Philosophy in its basic critical mode. BUT this "enlightened" view of the world as self-deceived is AS MUCH committed to the notion of baseline reality as the so-called naive view. The post-modernist view perceives the extent of the difficulty: "we must take seriously that there are no facts of the matter, that culture is not a shell game working to prop up the articulable bourgeois interests, but instead a free play of empty signifiers and random spectacles that - yes - tend to reinforce current interests, but not by hiding a discoverable truth". "The longstanding Western philosophical project has reached its endgame, and the results are in: not only can anyone say anything, but the anyone saying anything can be the highest elected official of the most powerful country in the world. Welcome to the postmodern condition!"
Bam. After this, policy proposals are non-specific, but fairly radical nonetheless. MK returns to the idea of "scaffolding" around free speech. Much the same as we accept limits on our freedom in the form of speed limits and traffic lights, we might also accept mutually-agreed limits on Interface-mediated speech. After all, the Internet is not really a Public Good: it is a highly structured commercial space, owned by private interests, whose main goal is to commodify us through our attention. Eyeballs and clicks.
But in the end MK disavows any specific collective solutions, as noted at the outset here. Ever the philosopher, one of his concluding thoughts is
Spoiler alert for those looking for specific policy proposals: on page 146, just 3 pages from the end of this short book, Kingwell writes "Are there collective solutions here? I honestly cannot say."
As another reviewer of the above-mentioned Harari book memorably said (in total), "Well, Fuck."
But my disappointment with the lack of a strong summation is well-tempered by the stunning insights that I gained along the way. I became aware of Kingwell decades ago, early in his career, but I lost track of his work during my non-reading years. I am reminded now that reading Kingwell is akin to drinking from a fire-hose, or perhaps, chugging some intoxicating liquor. Kingwell is a philosopher; as such, he puts current events and current socio-techno context in a theoretical framework without troubling over-much about delineating the trends that got us here - as a historian might. Kingwell's genius is to be a popularizer of philosophy: distilling the thought of others, and providing his own thought, in an accessible manner that is (mostly) stripped of jargon and abstruse theoretical framing.
Having lauded MK for accessibility, I must also add that I had to look up several words in the course of reading. The prospective reader ought to know the following: etiology, semiotics, immiserating, cathaxis, elision, hermeneutic, reified, ensorcellment (come on, that is basically a French word), oneiric. Also, by page 32 he has already referenced Heidegger, Schopenhauer, Adorno, Wittgenstein, Plato, Kierkegaard, Hegel, Nietzsche, and others. So it's like a cool lake: it's fine, once you get immersed.
Having established several existing philosophical views of boredom, MK argues for the existence of a new form: "Neoliberal boredom". "Boredom is now a natural extension of the unease and restlessness generated in the economic sphere, everywhere exacerbated by upgrade imperatives, frenzied claims concerning speed and satisfaction, and perhaps worst, a constant generation of happiness-destroying envy for a form of existence that always seems to be elsewhere, enjoyed by someone else, or just past the horizon of the present in a future that never arrives." (You see? That is the sort of sentence that just smacks me in the face like a wet salmon and leaves me agog.)
MK coins the (capitalized) term "The Interface" to describe "the narrow way in which the user experiences himself or herself through the specific mechanism of restless choosing." (Think: swipe-left, scrolling through lists, etc: the things you do on your phone). "The promises of the Interface [ie, content] are a sly seduction... Neoliberal boredom means not just the peculiar boredom of the Interface consumed in place of the content, but the distinct experience of subjective emplacement associated with that consumption - a species of imprisonment and lurking addiction in what turns out to be, indeed, rabid self-consumption."
MK connects these dots of The Interface and "neoliberal boredom" with current politics: "The Interface is implicated in the breakdown of truth as a governing norm because it casts everything in a gray zone of zero accountability. By the time a falsehood has been noted, we are already three turns along in the cycle. And the cycle never stops."
Quite interestingly, MK marks the progress of the "Western philosophical project". In what he calls the "high modern" phase, thinkers perceived a "duty of exposure": everyday society works to maintain illusions that serve the interests of the Current Arrangement. The duty of exposure reveals this shell game of falsity by leveraging penetrating insight... this is Philosophy in its basic critical mode. BUT this "enlightened" view of the world as self-deceived is AS MUCH committed to the notion of baseline reality as the so-called naive view. The post-modernist view perceives the extent of the difficulty: "we must take seriously that there are no facts of the matter, that culture is not a shell game working to prop up the articulable bourgeois interests, but instead a free play of empty signifiers and random spectacles that - yes - tend to reinforce current interests, but not by hiding a discoverable truth". "The longstanding Western philosophical project has reached its endgame, and the results are in: not only can anyone say anything, but the anyone saying anything can be the highest elected official of the most powerful country in the world. Welcome to the postmodern condition!"
Bam. After this, policy proposals are non-specific, but fairly radical nonetheless. MK returns to the idea of "scaffolding" around free speech. Much the same as we accept limits on our freedom in the form of speed limits and traffic lights, we might also accept mutually-agreed limits on Interface-mediated speech. After all, the Internet is not really a Public Good: it is a highly structured commercial space, owned by private interests, whose main goal is to commodify us through our attention. Eyeballs and clicks.
But in the end MK disavows any specific collective solutions, as noted at the outset here. Ever the philosopher, one of his concluding thoughts is
"Boredom is the sign that we are ever in the presence of death; but it is also, in the same moment, an urgent endorsement of life."So there. I hope you read it and enjoy it as I did.
May 18, 2020
So the problem is that the modern form of boredom is when the interface of a technology replaces the actual desire to use that technology for it's desired end: searching for a show on Netflix becomes the primary activity of using Netflix. We can construe this as harmful because our desire to use the technology for it's generally assumed intended purpose is deferred until it no longer meaningfully exists. The harm of this kind of boredom is that it eliminates any useful or reflective product of past types of boredom, of which Kingwell identifies five. This complete commodification of boredom may induce passivity and numbness, states of being that boredom previously resisted. This current state of boredom could have many ramifications.
The next two parts are context and do little to elaborate the argument. Instead they illuminate our post-truth moment, and suggest policy proposal's to curb that moment. These include scaffolding, which is nudging people towards better outcomes. He doesn't go into detail about what this would look like, especially noteworthy because he suggests this nudging would include penalties, which implies legal intervention. This is one possible wrinkle in his proposal that justifiably might disturb some people, but Kingwell doesn't acknowledge this possible complaint. I also think that these specific policy proposals, which are elaborated on, are not directly related to the boredom topic at hand, and do not need to be included in the context section. Give us an overview of the post-truth moment, which is valuable context to fully understand the kind of boredom we are dealing with now, and leave it at that. I will be fair, of course. It seems that Kingwell has written on this nudging before and includes sources. But WIWH isn't a long book, so a little more elaboration would have been nice.
The book concludes basically the same way in which it was begun. Suggesting that we need to cultivate the virtue's gained from a more traditional boredom while doing away with the interface boredom of the present moment. It's not hugely clear on where to go from here.
The next two parts are context and do little to elaborate the argument. Instead they illuminate our post-truth moment, and suggest policy proposal's to curb that moment. These include scaffolding, which is nudging people towards better outcomes. He doesn't go into detail about what this would look like, especially noteworthy because he suggests this nudging would include penalties, which implies legal intervention. This is one possible wrinkle in his proposal that justifiably might disturb some people, but Kingwell doesn't acknowledge this possible complaint. I also think that these specific policy proposals, which are elaborated on, are not directly related to the boredom topic at hand, and do not need to be included in the context section. Give us an overview of the post-truth moment, which is valuable context to fully understand the kind of boredom we are dealing with now, and leave it at that. I will be fair, of course. It seems that Kingwell has written on this nudging before and includes sources. But WIWH isn't a long book, so a little more elaboration would have been nice.
The book concludes basically the same way in which it was begun. Suggesting that we need to cultivate the virtue's gained from a more traditional boredom while doing away with the interface boredom of the present moment. It's not hugely clear on where to go from here.
November 15, 2019
part one is where the real philosophy lies, though it is largely summative. the rest is a series of meandering detours through the tech-inflected culture issues of today, justified by kingwell's invocation of adorno's politicization of boredom. clearly intended for a mass audience, the book I think needed some real phenomenological work in parts 2-4 to make the text coherent as a whole. to add to potential dissatisfaction, kingwell rightly indicts the corrupted system of late capital and quasi-democratic governance structures that have led to the capture and despoiling of our boredom. but in terms of solutions, he is incredibly unwilling to advocate for anything resembling the radical change his analysis seemingly calls for -- he clearly and with a bit of a textual smile disavows Marx and the various political traditions that claim him.
still, an astonishingly well-written piece of prose and something I largely enjoyed -- the text is really helpful for elucidating the present situation most Canadians (North Americans, even) find themselves in.
still, an astonishingly well-written piece of prose and something I largely enjoyed -- the text is really helpful for elucidating the present situation most Canadians (North Americans, even) find themselves in.
October 20, 2019
I've always had a love-hate relationship with philosophy. On one hand, it's a critical field when charting the way forward. On the other hand, it's useless mind masturbation; as bad as art for the sake of art. This book falls into the latter category. It's so academic, high-brow, and referential that the only people I can see enjoying this is a philosophy major.
The one thing that I'm really glad to have read was an offhand remark about how high school debate is not discourse. And that led to a rabbit hole of realizations, culminating with the one that being on the debate team was the biggest waste of my time in my life.
The one thing that I'm really glad to have read was an offhand remark about how high school debate is not discourse. And that led to a rabbit hole of realizations, culminating with the one that being on the debate team was the biggest waste of my time in my life.
April 29, 2019
I actually don’t fit in with the mainstream culture because I still read widely, deeply and critically. It is difficult in today’s culture to have conversations with people when they don’t know anything outside of the posts on their social media feeds. I rarely meet anyone these days who has read anything either challenging or thoroughly interpreted by words on the page. This book has - for the moment - has alleviated my depression.
June 7, 2020
You'll need more than Philosophy 101 to fully appreciate this book, but I knew that going in. This is not pop-psy of the kind that appears on best-seller lists, but it is thought-provoking nonetheless, at least the parts I could grasp. Up to date observations of the times, with Facebook and Google controlling almost all knowledge of the world and of us personally, it might make you examine how you interface with The Interface.
February 29, 2020
Satisfying but not really groundbreaking meditation about boredom. The author manages to pull on a few different threads but ultimately the reasoning isn't to revelatory. Still an interesting read.
April 30, 2023
I would be at a loss to explain to someone what this book is about. It is about boredom, but how do I explain it. The writing is good. I at times got what he was saying. I am not a philosophy student so at times I was just overwhelmed with philosophical thought and got lost in what was being said.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews