I think this book has opened up the ways I have made assumptions about what “public space” means it’s v cool!
Jan 5, 2025
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The other book consistently on my table, it's a short, but time consuming read. It set up a whole new way of analysing the city, by arguing that the urban environemnet has been commodified by capitalism and the acceses to not only the space and reseources, but also the governance of the city had become innacisble to most people.
If you are interested in discussions around third spaces I would highly recommend picking this one up, it goes way beyond the idea of having spaces to interact and form community, but hihglights the city as a space of political dispute and the possibilities of the people to self determine the terms of urban life.
Jan 14, 2025
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you know when you read good theory (or good anything really) and then you can‘t help but see further examples of whatever is being explored in the book IRL?
This book is giving that to me.
From Van Gogh immersive experience yoga to Uber eats, speed and immersion dominate so much of how things are delivered to us these days- whether that’s food or art.
The intro is really compelling. How Kornbluh connects the dots between immediacy in the sense of NOW! as well as the more hidden meaning of the word as without mediation. I saw a meme recently that showed future generations watching react videos of react videos of react videos which certainly speaks to this mass cultural wasting of the practice of mediating.
The mission this summer is mediation. come at me raw universe, I’m ready to think about ya and spit out feelings or something.
Apr 29, 2024
a treatise on the attention economy - checked it out on libby and got through it over the course of a work day, a lot of really interesting social and cultural explorations about how time itself is the final frontier of hypercapitalism and what decommodification of our attention and time should look like
the book starts with a story about the oldest redwood tree in oakland and how the only reason it’s still standing is bc it’s unmillable, and how being uncommercializable is essential to our survival. it ends with an exploration of alt social media platforms (mostly p2p ones) and what keeping the good parts of the social internet and rejecting the bad ones should look like
all in all a super valuable read; my only nitpick with the book is that odell isn’t just charting the attention economy but also attempting to “solve” it and relate it back to broader concepts about labor and social organizing, but her background is in the arts which leads to some really wonderful references to drive the points home while also missing some critical racial + socioeconomic analyses that one would expect (or at least really appreciate) from the book she promises to deliver in the introduction. but this does also make the book easier to read which is good because everyone should definitely engage with what she has to say
will definitely be revisiting
Mar 25, 2024
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Jan 2, 2025