The University of Pennsylvania is now offering a course where students are required to do nothing but “stare at the screen for three hours, only interacting through chat rooms, bots, social media and listservs.” So basically, it’s like every other college course, accept there’s no lecture going on in the background.
The goal of the class “Wasting Time on the Internet” isn’t totally clear, but has something to do with pondering the literary value and poetry of stuff like the junk on YouTube and listicles filled with GIFs of old Saved by the Bell references. The professor/poet behind the course told VICE, he was inspired to start the course because he was “very tired of reading articles in The New York Times every week that make us feel bad about spending so much time on the Internet, about dividing our attention so many times.” Either that, or he just wanted to teach a class that simply involves him just sitting around while students aimlessly goof around on their laptops …
