The University of Pennsylvania is set to introduce a new degree-level course focussing on aimlessly surfing the internet, the Telegraph reports.
“Wasting time on the internet” will be offered by the department of English, to English majors and students on the English Creative Writing track from 2015.
According to the course description, students will be required to “stare at the screen for three hours, only interacting through chat rooms, bots and social media”. It also states that “aimless drifting is mandatory”.
According to the Telegraph, the weekly three-hour seminar will also require attendees to read critical texts by Betty Friedan, Raymond Williams, Guy Debord, John Cage and others to “explore the long history of time wasting”.
They will also be required to turn the raw materials of all that internet time wasting – like status updates, browser histories, tweets, SMS messages and chat conversations – into ‘substantial works of literature’.
The course is being run by poet and Professor Kenneth Goldsmith, who is known for his attempt to print out the entire Internet on paper. In the past Goldsmith has also run courses on ‘Uncreative writing’, ‘Robot erotica’ and ‘Writing through art and literature’.
