'Wasting time on the Internet' is a real Ivy League college class
Finally, all those hours spent noodling around on social media can be harnessed into real college credit at a prestigious institution.
October 30, 2014
You may not be able to major in underwater basket weaving, but at least you can now take a class titled "Wasting time on the Internet." Your extensive and hard-won experience with blowing hours on watching videos of Japanese cats in boxes, crafting vague Facebook updates and seeking out the perfect doge meme may finally pay off.
The course is being offering for the spring 2015 semester through the English department at the University of Pennsylvania, a college known for its Ivy League status. The class is aimed at creative-writing students and English majors. The professor in charge of the class is noted poet Kenneth Goldsmith. You might recall Goldsmith's efforts last year to print out the entire Internet in honor of Aaron Swartz.
If you're looking for an easy "A," you might be disappointed. The class isn't just about sitting around and taking Buzzfeed quizzes, it actually aims to challenge students to turn what's perceived as wasted time into something productive.
"What if these activities -- clicking, SMSing, status-updating, and random surfing -- were used as raw material for creating compelling and emotional works of literature? Could we reconstruct our autobiography using only Facebook? Could we write a great novella by plundering our Twitter feed? Could we reframe the internet as the greatest poem ever written?" the course description asks.
