Treatise on Boredom
by Lars Svendsen
Apparently boredom was invented around the year 1760 along with the steam engine. Too bad, we were all born in the wrong century.
posted by Crp @ 11:43 AM
3 comments
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Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Apparently boredom was invented around the year 1760 along with the steam engine. Too bad, we were all born in the wrong century.
3 Comments:
The date 1760 is surely tremendously significant, because it connects the beginning of boredom with the beginning of the industrial revolution. It was in 1764 that James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny and James Watt invented the steam engine. These two dastardly machines - Blake's "cogs tyrannic" - tore the peasant from his creative self-sufficiency and substituted machine-work for handiwork.
Work in the 19th century duly became unbelievably boring and tedious, and has remained so ever since.
That is the single most insightful comment I have read since I moved to the corporate world.
IMan, didn't know you were such a hopeless romantic. Spend one day in the paddy fields and I bet you'll go running back to your corporate world at top speed.
CJ, paddy fields ain't the alternative but the machines and boredom insight is just too true dude. Academia exists in its own world. Just for the experience, you gotta do the corporate thing. You'll be a convert in no time.
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