00:00:13.780To make a donation, visit forthewild.world slash donate, or find us on Patreon.
00:00:20.080If you'd like to support us in other ways, consider sharing our episodes through social
00:00:24.380media or leaving us a review wherever you listen to the podcast.
00:00:30.000Hey, For the Wild community, it's Ayanna here.
00:00:33.860We are so grateful to all of the amazing members of our community who contribute to bringing this podcast to life each week, including all of our generous supporters over on Patreon.
00:00:44.460To keep For the Wild freely accessible to all, long-term we're exploring how we can fund the podcast without resigning ourselves to overly commercializing our airtime in order to sustain production.
00:00:56.100To continue to bring listeners weekly content like this,
00:00:59.060we're extending an invitation to anyone who is able to stand with us in this work.
00:01:04.260We're dreaming into a goal of raising $5,000 per month over on Patreon.
00:01:08.920If you value this podcast and the great visionaries who have been featured on this platform,
00:01:47.780It can be easy to forget the importance of those small moments of joy where you sort of remember what it is that you're fighting for in the first place.
00:01:58.720And I think there's a real risk of losing that and just living in this grind of despair.
00:02:05.740Jenny O'Dell is a writer, artist, and enthusiastic birdwatcher based in Oakland, California.
00:02:12.540She is the author of How to Do Nothing, Resisting the Attention Economy.0.93
00:02:16.580Odell teaches digital art at Stanford University and has been an artist-in-residence at the San Francisco Planning Department, the Internet Archive, and Recology SF, otherwise known as The Dump.
00:02:30.180oh jenny thank you so much for joining us today i am really looking forward to this conversation i
00:02:39.500think we need to be having what we're about to have with so many people and um yeah it's just
00:02:46.480so relevant and i'm sure you hear that a lot so i just appreciate you spending some time with us
00:02:51.240today thanks so much i'm happy to be here so the attention economy refers to our attention as
00:02:58.600currency and its existence predates social media and technology. But I think previously we were
00:03:05.300able to enter and exit this economy with more freedom, whereas now through the ubiquity of
00:03:11.020social media, we remain passively trapped. So to acclimate listeners to our conversation,
00:03:17.800how do you describe the attention economy and what meaning does it take on in context to the
00:03:23.040age of technology? Yeah, so I think that my definition would probably be pretty similar to
00:03:28.560what you just mentioned. It's an economy in which the currency is your attention. I think that can
00:03:34.480be measured in different ways, like engagement, amount of time spent on a platform, but basically
00:03:40.980attention is the currency. And as you also mentioned, it predates the era of social media.
00:03:46.660As long as we've had advertising, we've had the attention economy. And I think advertising is
00:03:51.300still a really important example to look at in terms of something that a group of people spent
00:03:55.460a lot of time on designing something that was meant to capture and hold your attention and
00:04:01.700ultimately direct your actions as well to buy something and so that's you know that's something
00:04:06.740that's been around for a long time and then of course now it's just much more sophisticated I
00:04:12.320would say it's more granular it's kind of embedded more thoroughly I think in a lot of our lives
00:04:18.620you know through social media but also through the fact that you have like a computer in your
00:04:22.300pocket at all times now and also that it's occurring on platforms that you use to keep
00:04:27.380in touch with your friends or to get information and so it's really quite difficult to get away
00:04:33.820from and I think that that's something that I was really struggling through you know in the book
00:04:39.160like I I think you know hopefully it comes across that it's it's it was sort of an open question
00:04:43.780for me? Like, what does the struggle look like? And what is, you know, what is a way of interacting
00:04:49.680and being in the world without completely succumbing to the attention economy all the time?
00:04:55.680Yeah, the computer in our pocket is so real for so many of us. And in How to Do Nothing,
00:05:03.920you write, quote, we know that we live in complex times that demand complex thoughts and conversations.
00:05:10.620and those in turn demand the very time and space that is nowhere to be found.
00:05:16.340The convenience of limitless connectivity has neatly paved over the nuances of in-person
00:05:21.780conversation, cutting away so much information and context in the process, end quote.
00:05:28.300And I wonder, what exactly is it that makes this so? In part, I think about how when one
00:05:35.800communicates on social platforms, to some extent, it's always for an audience. Even when one person
00:05:41.560is speaking to someone or commenting on someone's post, it's with the knowledge that it is for
00:05:47.420everyone else to see as well. And so I think with this loss of privacy, we reduce our own complexity
00:05:54.260or replace vulnerability with defensiveness. So do you think social media is inherently
00:06:00.300incompatible with complexity? You know, I would like to think that it's not necessarily, I think,
00:06:08.540as I think commercial social media is. And, you know, that's why I sort of towards the end of
00:06:12.960the book, I sort of try to imagine this like utopian social media that it's almost like
00:06:18.520difficult to imagine, but I'm trying, you know, to imagine a social media that just does what we
00:06:23.500want it to do, which is like connect us to other people, but without the sort of social currency
00:06:28.660of, you know, notifications and likes and all of the metrics of commercial social media.
00:06:34.700But as you say, like, I think some of it is maybe just, you know, related to this experience
00:06:41.680of communicating to a kind of anonymous public, even when you sort of feel like you're communicating
00:06:46.100with your friends and that maybe like part of the problem with the attention economy
00:06:50.000is already present in that kind of relationship.
00:06:52.800So I definitely think that in its current form, something like Twitter or Instagram, if you think of the sheer volume of information that you kind of scroll past when you use either one of those, absolutely is anathema to complexity.
00:07:08.080I mean, the number, I mean, think about like the number of seconds you even spend on anything. And, you know, one thing that I, one point I was trying to make in the book was that the attention economy trades on not just attention, but a really specific form of attention, I think a shallow one.
00:07:22.180so a kind of reactive knee-jerk reaction you know the way the kind of attention that an
00:07:28.140advertisement would work on you know um almost like habitual and and you know a lot of what
00:07:33.860i'm trying to do in the book is to talk about and try to encourage or grow this these other
00:07:39.500deeper slower forms of attention and it's like this shallow attention both feeds the attention
00:07:45.340economy but it also comes out of it so it's the thing that kind of like draws you into it but
00:07:49.340it's also the thing that it teaches you. And so I think there's this danger of entering the spiral
00:07:54.020where your attention is only ever very shallow and your attention span is very short. And the
00:07:58.780amount of attention that you pay to things is very small. And, and that I think is a big part
00:08:03.520of the problem with dealing with any kind of complexity, because if you are seeking context,
00:08:09.460you know, historical context, especially, but also just the kind of inherent complexity of any
00:08:15.420kind of even like a social movement or an idea really requires patience. It's something where
00:08:21.460you're not going to get results in five minutes. You're not going to get results tomorrow.
00:08:24.880You may be confused for some time. You may need to ask more questions. And all of these things
00:08:30.000are kind of like the opposite of the kind of attention and expectation that I think in its
00:08:35.520current form, social media definitely encourages. Yeah. And also to bring up that algorithms benefit
00:08:42.400off us acting out in rage or anger and fear it actually produces value for facebook twitter etc
00:08:50.260and and so i think that plays into that shallowness as well yeah yeah and it's something
00:08:56.340that like you know i was asking myself in late 2016 when i started working on the talk that
00:09:01.840that became the book and it's something that i've been asking myself again you know ever since then
00:09:06.700especially this year, which is like, you know, really stepping back from something like a
00:09:11.980reaction, the reaction to like need to post about something and just, you know, giving myself a
00:09:19.060pause and asking like, you know, who is this for? What is this actually accomplishing? And I, you
00:09:26.860know, I actually, in the last couple of months, I have been posting a lot less because I don't,
00:09:32.440I just sort of don't want to add to the noise.
00:09:34.840And I don't think that it's useful for me to do that.
00:09:37.040I think I have other ways of contributing that are maybe not as visible.
00:09:41.740They're not as immediate and they're not as illegible.
00:09:44.920They're not as legible as like a sort of action in the moment,
00:09:47.520but, but there's ultimately more meaningful to me.
00:09:51.360And, and they're also not serving the attention economy of these platforms,
00:09:55.920which is sort of agnostic in terms of content, right?
00:09:58.380It doesn't matter which side you're on or sort of what you're expressing.
00:10:03.540You know, engagement is engagement according to business models.
00:10:07.400In your work, you point out that congruently there has been a decline in public spaces
00:10:12.300that allow us to exist as human beings, not potential consumers.
00:10:17.200And this observation really leads me to think about content extraction and exploitation.
00:10:22.620Every time we peer into our phones and venture on social media,
00:10:26.560I do think some degree of extraction happens whether you are on the generating or consuming
00:10:32.620end. So what are the psychological ramifications of us giving ourselves freely to these platforms
00:10:39.260that are becoming more predatory and commercial? I think probably there's some loss of interiority.
00:10:47.400I mean, I think it's probably pretty clear from the book that I very highly prize a sense of
00:10:51.620interiority, um, and sort of maintaining a space for reflection. Um, and I think that those kinds
00:10:58.580of things are, are very much threatened by this like sort of imperative to constantly,
00:11:05.040um, externalize and to some extent advertise oneself. You know, like I have an Instagram and
00:11:11.560it's, I, I have such a troubled relationship with it because I have not figured out a way
00:11:16.860to post on it that doesn't feel like an advertisement for myself. And I don't know,
00:11:20.660maybe someone out there has figured it out, but I, I haven't, I think it's just, um, again,
00:11:26.800it's like something about the structure of it. And, and that's just such a different relationship,
00:11:30.940you know, to others and also to oneself than something like, like trying to cultivate these
00:11:36.920spaces either with oneself or among friends or family, or just sort of people who know you in
00:11:42.520which you can be more fluid. You know, you can experiment with different ideas. You can have
00:11:47.320dialogue um you don't always have to know that you have the right answer um in a sort of airtight
00:11:54.020way like you're growing basically like you're growing and evolving and and you know you may
00:11:58.820be different day to day and i think this is just like the reality of identity um you know one thing
00:12:03.500that i i talk a lot about in the context of ecology in the book is that i sort of subscribe
00:12:08.060to an ecological model of the self where the self is not you know it's not a bounded entity
00:12:13.260that is like accumulating value to itself over a lifetime,
00:24:45.060And yet I think that it's a very intense experience
00:24:47.480of the self, just in relationship to my surroundings. Um, and it's often in those
00:24:53.940moments that I kind of remember like really obvious things, like I'm alive. Um, I will not
00:24:59.320always be alive. I live on, you know, that I live on the earth and it's also, you know, like,
00:25:07.360you know, there's the fact of it's being there and I'm here, like these really like sort of basic
00:25:10.980fundamental things that I think, um, it's actually easy to go a long time without remembering any of
00:25:16.700those things um so uh i would say for me like the the most most ideal version of of doing nothing
00:25:24.000is something where you can access that feeling as well yeah losing the self it's so relieving
00:25:31.160yeah it's something i try to do every day very often just to get out of my own way to live life
00:25:40.500And, yeah, I think about our generation and the ones after, and our bodies have been just incredibly abused by a consumer-driven, ego-driven society, and especially for younger ones who, through technology, media, and entertainment, have been severed from the sensuous world at such an early age.
00:26:02.740and not just the impacts to our physical body but of course our minds are in a very abusive
00:26:08.340relationship with media as well so many of us find ourselves in this place where we get anxious from
00:26:14.840being present but alternatively we're also anxious on social media and so we're caught between these
00:26:21.360two forms of anxiety but it just so happens that social media is much more addictive so how does
00:26:27.780nothingness become a form of rehabilitation and a way to actually practice embodiment
00:26:33.880as well under this scenario? Yeah, it's funny that you use the word addictive, because I think
00:26:40.760some of what I'm describing in the book is finding something that falls under this category of
00:26:47.580nothing that is also addictive. But it's just something that's not destroying you. And so I
00:26:54.940I don't know if I would ever use the word addictive to describe my relationship to bird watching, but it but I do also sometimes describe myself as an involuntary bird watcher, which is, you know, because I actually can't help but look for birds all the time.
00:27:09.240And if I mean, you can just ask my boyfriend, like if we're going on a walk and it's getting dark and clearly we should turn around and go back.
00:27:16.300But there are a lot of birds like I'm not going to want to go back. Like I'm always like I will stay until the last minute.
00:27:22.080um and so like i i think that actually you know the word nothing it sounds very inert but um i
00:27:28.680think the trick is to sort of find something like this that exerts a comparable pull on you and like
00:27:37.880i said i think that that is something that that's very different for for anyone based on you know
00:27:42.620what they're interested in you know like basically like finding a some kind of rabbit hole that that
00:27:49.400just sustains you instead of driving you into this like wheel of anxiety. And that sounds
00:27:56.080difficult, but I, I don't think it actually is. I think, I think we're drawn to things that make
00:28:03.980us feel good or things that right now make us feel just better. I mean, I'm just thinking
00:28:10.020personally of times when, you know, I was really sort of caught in this shallow attention for a
00:28:17.520long time you know probably working too hard and just not being kind to myself and then just you
00:28:22.940know having and having my attention be very scattered and then just having maybe like a
00:28:26.920two-hour conversation with a friend and the relief that you feel at you know during that conversation
00:28:33.080and afterwards and how different a way of being that is from how you were before I don't I don't
00:28:39.060think you soon forget that and so I think just being attentive to and then seeking out these
00:28:45.560circumstances in which your attention is absorbed by something else or someone else that can hold
00:28:51.260it. And maybe it takes a bit of searching to find out what that is. I also think there's, you know,
00:28:55.660such potential in finding and connecting with others who share those interests. So, you know,
00:29:02.360like I have gone on a couple of birding field trips with, you know, like the Golden Gate Audubon
00:29:07.800Society and just like being together with a, you know, a small group of people that are all really
00:29:12.320focused on you know this one kind of duck or something that we're all looking for that's just
00:29:17.300so it's very like a nourishing experience compared to you know what you know this platform that is
00:29:23.860designed to also hold my attention but doesn't really do anything for me and actually actively
00:29:29.860saps my energy and you know leaves me feeling like depressed and anxious yeah I don't think
00:29:37.540you are alone in that and I think too with bird watching looking for ducks there's something too
00:29:45.520that it brings our attention to the natural world to actually what does literally sustain us
00:29:53.040yeah I think that even the way our eyes adjust to the earth and the colors of the forest or the sky
00:30:03.220or the soil compared to the light of a screen and you know there's just so much to that and
00:30:11.320you write how quote doing nothing isn't a one-time event where you turn off your phone for 48 hours or
00:30:18.280permanently rebuke all technology because most of us can't afford these luxuries which I really
00:30:24.180appreciate you acknowledging and in lieu of this you present refusal in place which suggests that
00:30:31.480if we are indeed within the attention economy, we must practice how to live well within it.
00:30:37.480So can you talk a bit about how refusal requires degrees of latitude,
00:30:41.460as well as what perpetual refusal looks like in practice for you?
00:30:46.940Yeah, yeah, it was important for me to acknowledge that, you know, different folks have different
00:30:52.980margins of refusal, as I think I also call it. You know, I don't want to make any assumptions about
00:30:58.580anyone's you know need or desire to use social media you know for example like someone who works
00:31:05.360in media right like a journalist um has to have you know typically has to have an online presence
00:31:10.000you know for all sorts of reasons or you know even just like the just wanting to all of your
00:31:15.800friends are on social media and you need you know you you feel like you need to be there to
00:31:19.520participate there are all kinds of reasons that you would not be able to just kind of like
00:31:23.220um as I as I say like throw your phone in the ocean and and run away and so I think that
00:31:29.980for me the kind of refusal in place it has to do with perspective and trying to gain perspective
00:31:39.040and and also making as I say and it's not a one-time event trying to make that into a sort
00:31:44.860of discipline or practice so you know just to borrow like from a physical example like
00:31:50.000So I live at the bottom of a hill and I have, in the last couple of months, I've developed this routine of every morning, I walk to the top of this hill. It doesn't take that long. I walk to the top of this hill and there's an intersection where I can, if it's clear, I can see the bay, the San Francisco bay.
00:32:08.500um and then i can you know see san francisco and the mountains behind it like if it's clear enough
00:32:13.840and and then i just and i go back and do whatever i was doing and i i think i'm doing that to sort
00:32:20.560of like orient myself spatially but also there's something that i think we a lot of us intuitively
00:32:26.440have experienced which is like we we do that right like we walk to the top of the hill to get
00:32:31.380to to look at you know the environment in which we just were from a different angle
00:32:36.400and that gives us some kind of feeling of understanding
00:39:51.900listen to their songs and when did these paths diverge was it when technology emerged
00:40:01.820or at the onset of the written word or when we stopped listening to the birds
00:40:10.700there is this line and how to do nothing that really struck me and i think will resonate with
00:40:23.360our listeners as well you write quote if you become interested in the health of the place
00:40:29.020where you are whether that's cultural or biological or both i have a warning you will
00:40:34.860see more destruction than progress, end quote. And this draws upon Aldo Leopold's articulation
00:40:42.520of a world of wounds. And I think about this in context of smaller scales of attention.
00:40:48.400And I wonder if downsizing our scales of attention could actually soften some of the
00:40:53.900blows of living in the ruins, sort of hold us as we reintegrate into the world and reclaim
00:41:00.420our attention? Yeah. I mean, again, just during the pandemic, like in addition to the kind of
00:41:08.420changing of the seasons, like one thing that I have been really attentive to is again, not everyone
00:41:14.140is into birdwatching. I, which I have to acknowledge, but for me, like the experience
00:41:18.360of seeing certain birds is one of it's just joy, you know, like, I mean, that's really the only
00:41:24.000word that I can think of to describe it. And it's really strange in a way to experience that in the
00:41:32.280midst of a larger concern about the decline in birds. I recently wrote, I guess it wasn't that
00:41:39.280recent, early this year, I wrote a review for The Atlantic of a book by Jennifer Ackerman about bird
00:41:45.980behavior. And that book is a combination of wonder at all of these new kind of inexplicable
00:41:52.800things that we're learning about what birds can do at the same time that, you know, there's such
00:41:57.180a huge decline in bird populations. And so it sounds kind of difficult to square those two,
00:42:03.480but I think that actually the daily experience of these encounters with birds, which for the
00:42:10.320time being are still in my neighborhood is actually what sustains me enough to live in
00:42:15.620that world in which there's you know um in which i'm i am so concerned about them and then there's
00:42:22.920a lot to be sort of frightened and angry and and anxious about i i think that it can be easy to
00:42:29.560forget the importance of those small moments of joy where you sort of remember like what it is
00:42:36.960that you're fighting for in the first place and i think there's a real risk of losing that and
00:42:41.060sort of just living in this grind of despair which again is very lucrative for the attention
00:42:47.660economy among other things but yeah I think that it's only more important now to you know not of
00:42:57.380course not lose sight of of these issues um that feel quite crushing but but to also experience
00:43:03.620like in these kind of small spaces within that um just like appreciation and love and gratitude for
00:43:09.360for, for those, you know, for what you, what is in front of you, um, and what is around you.
00:43:16.000Mm-hmm. Gosh, that is so important. It's like, we can, we can lose this entire earth while
00:43:25.140being distracted on a screen of an earth that isn't real on that screen. You know, it's, it's,
00:43:31.160I remember seeing this cartoon of this guy looking at his computer screen and there was a forest,
00:43:37.620but outside his window was a bunch of stumps and yeah it's it just oh it just feels so important
00:43:47.300and in your writing you you often talk and in this interview you know you've been talking about the
00:43:52.820companionship and guidance that bird watching has provided you over the years and I think it's
00:43:57.720always important to underscore the ways in which our attention to the more than human world really
00:44:02.640sustains us. And I also think about, you know, yeah, just kind of going back to this cartoon.
00:44:12.080It's like a step further, I think. We know how to make reels and shopping tabs. And, you know,
00:44:20.140we notice the shopping tab on Instagram, we notice IG, we know how to create IGTVs, but yet we don't
00:44:25.900know the bird species around us. We don't know their song, we don't know what they look like.
00:44:30.220And therefore, we don't know if they go extinct. We don't know if they're in peril. And so I think also just about what children are learning and what they're not learning and how that disconnection really stops us from being able to stand up in defense of the earth, which is actually the basis of our survival.
00:44:52.760so yeah I don't have a direct question there but just hearing your last response and kind of
00:44:59.000getting in that rabbit hole of the knowledge that our attention brings us and how it's not
00:45:08.940it is for our psychological health but it actually is also for our very survival
00:45:13.520to notice what's around us like in the actual real world um so yeah I'll pause there before
00:45:21.220I like really go down that hole, but if there's anything you want to add, I'm interested to hear
00:45:28.340it. I mean, I will say that, um, you know, I, I mentioned earlier the utopian social media,
00:45:35.840it is still difficult for me to imagine that, but I, but I think it's also true that there are uses
00:45:40.880of um uh you know uses of online connection that actually um can can help with things like this so
00:45:51.340you know i mentioned i naturalist at one point in the book which is the app that lets you identify
00:45:56.120plants and if you're lucky animals and which has been huge for me in terms of like becoming
00:46:02.140familiar with my uh with my bio region like the ability to not only like take a photo but also
00:46:07.960and then it gives you it lets you guess um so it or it gives you some guesses you choose one and
00:46:13.880then um usually a person who is kind of certified to do so will um confirm or deny within a couple
00:46:19.900of days depending on how popular it is where you are but um i i went to an i naturalist happy hour
00:46:26.300at one point and it was like really i met the person who had been um confirming a lot of my
00:46:31.780iNaturalist observations and and then you know there's like I've just noticed things like on the
00:46:38.380Golden Gate Audubon Society email list there's this kind of like feeling of a community of people
00:46:43.840that's looking out for for example like a specific species you know just kind of talking about like
00:46:48.820oh you know I've noticed that fewer of these have showed up this year has anyone else noticed that
00:46:52.920kind of like coordination of like attention right and and also being able to like respond right to
00:46:59.480there's some kind of like problem or threat. Um, so I think that that's an example of, uh,
00:47:08.100the ways in which I think just, you know, technology or sort of online connection in
00:47:11.500itself, you know, it can sort of be used for, it can be used in multiple directions. It doesn't
00:47:17.040always have to be this kind of nefarious distracting thing that's so divorced from
00:47:22.840the physical world. Like I think there are ways in which my favorite example of a piece of
00:47:26.880technology is binoculars because it allows me to see something that I can't see with my unaided eye
00:47:32.980and so there's ways of thinking about technology that I think can be in support of this identification
00:47:40.540with and support of the natural world yeah absolutely yeah it's it's technology may not
00:47:50.360be an evil in and of itself. I mean, maybe some people would argue at that. But yeah, I'm thinking
00:47:58.960about in your article, why birds do what they do for the Atlantic. You talk about birdwatching in
00:48:05.400the cemetery near your house and how it provides this sense of erasure and the feeling of absolving
00:48:11.100oneself from the world. And lately, I've been thinking about the soft power that melding
00:48:16.840ourselves into the world provides as we dismantle human supremacy. But this example at the cemetery
00:48:23.440speaks of a sort of imagined erasure. And I'm curious to hear more about that practice as well,
00:48:30.420even if just in small temporary moments. Yeah, I mean, I used the word humbling earlier. And I think
00:48:38.600that um when you you know there's there's a form of bird watching I think I say this in the book
00:48:47.180that's a little bit like Pokemon Go right like it's like I got that one I got that one you're
00:48:51.420kind of going down the list and it feels it still feels very acquisitive to me um like you're
00:48:56.640acquiring something and uh whereas like my sort of preferred form of bird watching I mean don't
00:49:02.240get me wrong I get really excited when I see a new species for the first time but um you know
00:49:07.040I also have known these crows on my street for, you know, now four years as family of crows.
00:49:15.400And crows are, you know, supposedly a very common bird.
00:49:19.860Although, you know, it's, they're also some by, by human measures of intelligence, they're,
00:49:24.600they're very intelligent and can recognize faces and all this.
00:49:27.480But all of that aside, you know, I, I think the more time I spend with them and observing
00:49:35.760them and their behavior over the years um it's not like I have some it's not like I'm grasping
00:49:42.460them or I can understand them better it actually increases the complexity that I see when I look
00:49:48.640at them and at some point it sort of flips things where you know they are to me like the biggest
00:49:54.460reminder that I'm an animal and that when they look at me they see an animal that you know I
00:50:00.060and the crows are animals and uh uh it really yeah like i said it kind of um flips that that
00:50:07.680um relationship that i think we're really used to of seeing um the animate world is sort of
00:50:12.900subordinate to humans and and not lacking an agency and just sort of like things in the world
00:50:18.620um i think if you spend enough time you know anyone who has a pet probably understands this
00:50:23.240right like who hasn't looked at their pet and wondered like what are you thinking um but it's
00:50:27.680like this kind of moment in which you it's not that you're able to see the world through their
00:50:32.800eyes it's almost it's the understanding that you you can never see the world through their eyes
00:50:37.400there's a completely different way of being in the world that you will never understand
00:50:40.120and yet these two ways of being in the world are like staring at each other and i think that's
00:50:44.980really it's humbling because it de-centers you um and it sort of this is it makes you just one
00:50:52.840piece of this larger puzzle. Like you're just another animal. Of course, you know, I say just
00:50:58.480another animal, like meanwhile, humans are like destroying the earth, but, but in that sort of
00:51:02.480moment, it's just kind of like a reminder that, um, that you, you don't actually have any kind
00:51:07.680of inherent primacy vis-a-vis this other being. Right. Yeah. Oh, well, Jenny, for my final
00:51:16.400question i want to talk about what you call manifest dismantling and the necessity of
00:51:22.960reframing progress and invention as you conclude how to do nothing you write quote 19th century
00:51:29.640views of progress production and innovation relied on an image of the land as a blank slate
00:51:35.500where its current inhabitants and systems were like so many weeds and what was destined to
00:51:40.900become an American lawn. But if we sincerely recognized all that was already here, both
00:51:48.080culturally and ecologically, we started to understand that anything framed as construction
00:51:52.700was actually also destruction, end quote. So can you speak to how boycotting the attention economy
00:52:00.080also means tangible and intangible commitments to place and a sort of repair in the form of
00:52:07.020unraveling? Yeah, I mean, I think that one example of this, you know, one example of the fact that
00:52:17.300dealing with the attention economy requires actions that would have to happen outside of
00:52:21.280the sphere of what we would consider the attention economy is just access to a sense of place. So
00:52:28.920I talk a little bit in that chapter about the disparate access to outdoor space that happens,
00:52:34.200You know, for example, in Oakland, there are far fewer parks in West Oakland than where I am, you know, where you think about someone who lives in the hills versus someone who lives next to the port.
00:52:44.680And then also the fact that I mentioned that in tandem with the fact that, you know, many sort of tech moguls have prohibited use of, you know, iPhones at the dinner table or they have some sort of someone who's helping them kind of curtail their use.
00:53:01.820Meanwhile, someone, you know, let's say like a single mother who's working really hard and just needs to kind of put something in front of her children is going to like, you know, give them the phone.
00:53:11.960So there's these kind of differences in privilege access and class that I think like, you know, have to be kind of acknowledged if you really, you know, are talking about a holistic way of dealing with the attention economy.
00:53:26.640So that's part of the reason that I that I end the book by talking about this park that I feel like really encapsulates all of these things.
00:53:37.300And I think it's just such an amazing example because it is an example of what I would call manifest dismantling and that it used to be a naval supply depot.
00:53:47.160And then it's basically the port turned it into a park.
00:53:52.360and in doing so it had to it had been dredged so they had to recreate a kind of beach that would
00:53:59.500have been there and so that's work right like putting up in the work of returning something
00:54:05.880to how it used to be or just taking something out like dismantling something and then all of
00:54:11.460these shorebirds showed up it's still actually a really great place for bird watching but it also
00:54:15.920has a tower that's um named after chapelle hayes who was someone who was very instrumental in
00:54:22.600bringing awareness to oakland of environmental racism uh especially with the port being right
00:54:27.180next to west oakland um so there's that sort of monument as well it's a kind of observation tower
00:54:32.320so you can walk up there and just kind of see the whole park um and then you know just on in a more
00:54:37.600basic sense it's a park that's in west oakland so it's a and it's a space for reflection it's
00:54:42.520space for community with others community with um the birds who are visiting and like to me like
00:54:50.200when I think of what my definition of productive is like that's what it is is that park it's like
00:54:56.940something that you know was restored and a lot of work went into that restoration and then it's
00:55:03.740also something that's acknowledging you know it's acknowledging harm that's been done um and so you
00:55:09.800know it's like I I don't really want to use the language of like I try not to use the language
00:55:14.280of forward and backward but I think if you subscribe to the kind of manifest destiny
00:55:19.880version of like linear progressive history it will look like turning back it will look like
00:55:25.240turning around and going backwards but I think that that it only looks that way from that point
00:55:30.040of view from the point of view of like health and flourishing and acknowledgement and justice like
00:55:34.740it's just it's just um improvement um I don't really know what else to call it um and it and
00:55:42.580it is productive it's productive of of meaning and uh and you know acknowledgement of of things
00:55:50.500that should have been acknowledged so yeah for me that's that's kind of the best example and
00:55:55.040I was really heartened to see yesterday that the the there are some dams um in on the Klamath that
00:56:03.040are like maybe uh step closer to being dismantled i i have the example of the dam that's dismantled
00:56:09.160in the carmel valley in my book but i think you know that's like a really literal example is like
00:56:14.220just literally like taking down a structure in order to restore um a habitat for fish and
00:56:21.120and other beings so like i just think examples abound of like just removing like something that
00:56:27.160just needs to be removed um to me that's like a step quote unquote forward absolutely i'm so
00:56:34.080excited about the klamath dam news this week and and praying that it follows through with
00:56:41.060the mission of taking down those dams i think i think there's something like 70 000 dams
00:56:46.720across the united states and we got to take them down especially when we still have access to
00:56:53.120fossil fuels got to take them down so yeah that's such a wonderful note to end on thank you jenny
00:57:00.340for your time this has been such an important conversation that i feel like everybody listening
00:57:05.720will feel connected to in one way or the other thank you so much it's been my pleasure
00:57:11.720thank you for listening to for the wild podcast the music you heard today is by harrison foster
00:57:20.860Bosques Fragmentados, Samara Gisando, and Critscum.
00:57:25.480For the Wild is created by Ayanna Young, Erica Ekrem,
00:57:29.080Francesca Glassbell, and Melanie Tucker.