Transcript: JENNY ODELL on Resisting the Attention Economy [ENCORE] /330
Ayana Young Hello and welcome to For The wild Podcast. I'm Ayana Young. Today I'm speaking with Jenny Odell.
Jenny Odell It can be easy to forget the importance of those small moments of joy, where you sort of remember, like what it is that you're fighting for in the first place. And I think there's a real risk of losing that and you're just living in this grind of despair.
Ayana Young Jenny Odell is a writer, artist, and enthusiastic birdwatcher based in Oakland, California. She is the author of How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. Odell 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).
Oh, Jenny, thank you so much for joining us today. I am really looking forward to this conversation, I think we need to be having what we're about to have with so many people. And yeah, it's just so relevant. And I'm sure you hear that a lot. So I just appreciate you spending some time with us today.
Jenny Odell Thanks so much. I'm happy to be here.
Ayana Young So, the attention economy refers to our attention as currency, and its existence predates social media and technology, but I think previously we were able to enter and exit this economy with more freedom, whereas now, through the ubiquity of social media we remain passively trapped. To acclimate listeners to our conversation, how do you describe the attention economy and what meaning does it take on in context to the age of technology?
Jenny Odell Yeah, so I think that my definition would probably be pretty similar to what you just mentioned, it's an economy in which the currency is your attention, I think that can be measured in different ways, like, you know, engagement: amount of time spent on a platform. But basically, attention is the currency. And as you also mentioned, it predates, you know, the era of social media, as long as we've had advertising, we've had the attention economy. And I think advertising is still a really important example to look at in terms of something that a group of people spent a lot of time on designing something that was meant to capture and hold your attention and ultimately, direct your actions as well to buy something. And so that's, you know, that's something that's been around for a long time. And then of course, now it's just much more sophisticated, I would say it's more granular, it's kind of embedded more thoroughly, I think, in a lot of our lives, you know, through social media, but also through the fact that you have like a computer in your pocket at all times now. And also that it's occurring on platforms that you use to keep in touch with your friends, or to get information. And so it's really quite difficult to get away from and I think that that's something that I was really struggling through, you know, in the book like I, I think, you know, hopefully it comes across that it was sort of an open question for me, like, what is the struggle look like and what is, you know, what is a way of interacting and being in the world without completely succumbing to the attention economy all the time?
Ayana Young In How to Do Nothing, you write, “We know that we live in complex times that demand complex thoughts and conversations - and those, in turn, demand the very time and space that is nowhere to be found. The convenience of limitless connectivity has neatly paved over the nuances of in-person conversation, cutting away so much information and context in the process.” And I wonder, what exactly is it that makes this so? In part, I think about how when one communicates on social platforms, to some extent, it is always for an audience, even when one person is speaking to someone, or commenting on someone’s post, it is with the knowledge that it is for everyone else to see as well, and so I think with this loss of privacy we reduce our own complexity or replace vulnerability with defensiveness. Do you think social media is inherently incompatible with complexity?
Jenny Odell You know, I would like to think that it's not necessarily. I think, as commercial social media is and, you know, that's why I sort of towards the end of the book, I sort of try to imagine this, like utopian social media that it's almost like difficult to imagine, but I'm trying, you know, to imagine a social media that just does what we want it to do, which is like, connect us to other people, but without the sort of social currency of, you know, notifications, and likes and all of the metrics of commercial social media. But as you say, like I think some of it is maybe just, you know, related to this experience of communicating to a kind of anonymous public, even when you sort of feel like you're communicating with your friends. And that maybe part of the problem with the attention economy, it’s already present in that kind of relationship.
So 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. I mean think about, like the number of seconds even spent on anything. And you know, 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. So kind of reactive knee jerk reaction, you know, the way the kind of attention that an advertisement would work on, you know, almost like habitual and, and, you know, a lot of what I'm trying to do in the book is to talk about and try to encourage or grow this, these other deeper, slower forms of attention. And it's like this shallow attention both feeds the attention economy, but it also comes out of it. So it's the thing that kind of like draws you into it. But it's also the thing that it teaches you and so there's this danger of entering this spiral where your attention is only ever very shallow. And your attention span is very short. And the amount of attention that you pay to things is very small.
And, and that I think is a big part of the problem with dealing with any kind of complexity. Because if you are seeking contexts, you know, historical context, especially. But also just the kind of inherent complexity of any kind of, even like a social movement or an idea really requires patience. It's something where you're not going to get results in five minutes, you're not going to get results tomorrow, you may be confused for some time, you may need to ask more questions, and all of these things are kind of like the opposite of, of the kind of attention and expectation that I think, in its current form, social media definitely encourages.
Ayana Young Yeah, and also to bring up that algorithms benefit off us acting added in rage or anger and fear. It actually produces value for Facebook, Twitter, etc. And so I think that plays into that shallowness as well.
Jenny Odell Yeah and it's something that I was asking myself, in late 2016, when I started working on the talk that that became the book, and it's something that I've been asking myself again, you know, ever since then, especially this year, which is like really stepping back from something like a reaction, the reaction to like, need to post about something, and just, you know, giving myself a pause and asking, like, you know, who is this for? What is this actually accomplishing? And in the last couple of months, I have been posting a lot less because I just sort of don't want to add to the noise. And I don't think that it's useful for me to do that. I think I have other ways of contributing, that are maybe not as visible, they're not as immediate, and they're not as illegible, they're not as legible as a sort of action in the moment. But there's ultimately more meaninging to me. And, and they're also not serving the attention economy of these platforms, which is sort of agnostic in terms of content, right? It doesn't matter which side you're on or sort of what you're expressing, you know, engagement is engagement, according to business models.
Ayana Young In your work, you point out that, congruently, there has been a decline in public spaces that allow us to exist as human beings, not potential consumers, and this observation really leads me to think about content, extraction, and exploitation. Every time we peer into our phones and venture on social media, I do think some degree of extraction happens whether you are on the generating or consuming end. What are the psychological ramifications of us giving ourselves freely to these platforms that are becoming more predatory and commercial?
Jenny Odell I think probably there's some loss of interiority. I mean, I think it's probably pretty clear from the book that I very highly prized a sense of interiority, and sort of maintaining a space for reflection. And I think that those kinds of things are very much threatened by the sort of imperative to constantly externalize, and to some extent, advertise oneself. I have an Instagram, it's, I have such a troubled relationship with it, because I have not figured out a way to post on it, that doesn't feel like an advertisement for myself, and I don't know, maybe someone out there has figured it out. But I haven't. I think it's just, again, it's something about the structure of it. And, and that's just such a different relationship, you know, to others, and also to oneself, than something like, like trying to cultivate these spaces, either with oneself or among friends, or family, or just sort of people who know you, in which you can be more fluid. You know, you can experiment with different ideas, you can have dialogue, you don't always have to know that you have the right answer in a sort of airtight way. Like you're growing basically, like you're growing and evolving. And you may be different day to day, and I think this is just like the reality of identity.
You know, one thing that I talk a lot about in the context of ecology in the book is that I sort of subscribe to an ecological model of the self where the self is not, you know, it's not a bounded entity, that is like accumulating value to itself over a lifetime, but rather, this kind of intersection of many different influences and flows and circumstances. And that is so different from, you know, the extreme would be like a personal brand. But even if you're not really necessarily trying to brand yourself, I think there's you're trending in that direction, usually, if you're using social media a certain way. So I think that it just has kind of troubling implications for the ecological growing, learning, and changing of self that needs room and space, and sort of lack of fear in terms of experimentation and learning.
Ayana Young Mm hmm. Yeah, that's such a good point, like, the brand of self. The identity creates these projections and “pedistilizing”, I don't know if that's quite the word, but it doesn't allow people to be people, people to be human and dynamic in their humaneness. But instead, it's like, “Oh, well, this is what people expect from me. They think this is what my brand identity is. That's what they're projecting onto. And if I don't follow that model, then I won't be accepted, or I won't be liked.” And yeah, it's sad, because we are such dynamic creatures that need to evolve, and shift and change and grow and learn. And yeah, gosh, there's so much to that. And, talking about the extractive nature of the attention economy and social media, also leads me to think about surveillance. You mention the Nextdoor app, which has largely become a forum of surveillance; people report their neighbors, share video footage from their Ring home security systems, etc. And we also use social media to surveil people we know, and similarly, these platforms surveil us. So I’m curious to hear how you think about surveillance as being a part of the attention economy?
Jenny Odell Yeah, it's, it's, I mean, it's one of those things where it again, not everyone, but I think for a lot of people's use of social media has become so second nature that you, you can sometimes forget that it is a voluntary decision. It's quite habitual at this point, right. Maybe it did feel voluntary. But I think that it's easy to lose sight of the fact that you are offering up so much information about yourself anytime, again, you know, you don't even have to be posting right. Literally the minute you are in the space like every everything you do is tracked right like you know how much time you spend looking at things like what you're looking at what you're engaging with, who you're following, where you are, and that's completely outside of the then very personal information that you're, you know, offering up, you know, in the caption of your post.
And I think, again, it's one of those things where if you kind of just step back for even a second, or, you know, something I really recommend, which I'm not alone in recommending this is just like, you know, try not doing it for a while, doesn't have to be that long, like, I guess depends on how frequently you use it, right. But let's say, you take like a week off or something, and I also strongly believe that, you know, you don't need to make a big post about how you're going to be taking a hiatus from Instagram, like you don't owe anyone that, you don't work for this anonymous audience, you don't need an out of office message for the world. Like, you can just decide to not use it for a while. And I think that one of the things that happens when you step back is like these things that started to seem, you know, very, sort of, so second nature, they're hard to see, they will come back into focus. And I think you may start to ask questions, like, you know, “Why am I offering all of this information? Why am I spending so much time in this space, in which I am generating so much data that is so lucrative to these companies?” Not to mention, offering up parts of myself to, you know, question marks, right, like, complete strangers, versus maybe just sending things to your friend, who is actually the person who you wanted to see that thing. And so I'm very troubled by how much this idea of surveillance has not, it's not that it's disappeared, I think people are aware of it. But if you just even think about the last, you know, like five or 10 years, I feel like there's a kind of a prevailing attitude of like, I know that it's a thing, and I'm just gonna do it anyway. And it's just kind of a necessary evil of me using social media. And I don't, I don't think we should accept that.
Ayana Young Yeah, and the question to around surveillance and activism and protest, my interview with Lauren Reagan, who's an attorney out of Oregon, you know, she talks about, don't be posting pictures of people at protests, because you're literally giving information about people who may or may not be consenting to give that to basically Big Brother, the cops, whoever. And so, you know, there's that level, to have civil disobedience and with things being so recorded at all times, and posted at all times, but then also my interview with Sii-am Hamilton, they're saying, you know, no, please do post pictures of us, because if we go missing, we want people to find us. There is safety in that type of self surveillance or community surveillance. And so I really hear both sides of the spectrum when it comes to social media surveillance and civil disobedience, protest activism. And it's something that I think we need to just think more about, and come to community consent about and really strategize about, how are we using these platforms? How are we taking power from them? Or what are we using them for? I mean, there's all these questions that come to mind. But yeah, so I don't know if there's anything you want to say on that. But it's such a big topic, they could go all different ways.
Jenny Odell Yeah, I mean, I, I very much feel like, you know, I wrote the book, hoping that it might be helpful to activists, among others. But I am not personally an activist. And I say that because I know some activists, much more actually, now than before I wrote the book, and I understand the sort of work of that and how specific it is, it's a very specific type of work. And so, I would just say that, that's why so I so value, the research of the type that I cite in the book by Veronica Barassi, who is actually going and interviewing activists about how they use social media and the sort of like pros and cons, like, you know, obviously, it's a way for them to spread information and be connected. But she also talks about the kind of temporal problems with it always needing to kind of stay on top of the stack of content. So you constantly have to be putting things out and it sort of collapses, the complexity of conversations that need to happen. And, you know, just these kinds of different aspects of social media that help or hurt someone who is trying to do activism. And so I really, I think that that's a really fruitful kind of area of research and something that I've, you know, tried to talk to more activists about their relationship with the attention economy and social media just because it's something that, you know, I don't have that direct experience with but I'm really interested in.
Ayana Young I’d like to discuss the notion of “nothing”. The first thing that came to my mind is how, over the past couple of years we’ve conflated nothingness with mindless actions, if we’ve just spent the last hour scrolling on our phones, we say we’ve done nothing. What do you think nothingness means in our culture, and what does the ideal act of doing nothing look like for you?
Jenny Odell I think that, generally, I would say, we probably think of doing nothing as not having anything to show for your time. And I'm generalizing, I don't think everyone feels that way. But I think culturally, right, we very much value productivity, and producing, you know, results. So whether that's work or kind of measurable self improvement, or, you know, something that you can see, right, like I have something to show for your time. So if you don't have anything to show for your time, then then you sort of did nothing.
And as you said, like all kinds of things get caught in that like, mindless activity, but also activity that has no goal; rest, caretaking, maintenance, all the things that things that I would put, I personally would count as productive, but I think don't typically fall into that category. And I mean, that's part of the reason I mentioned at the very beginning, the amount of maintenance work that goes into the Rose Garden, where a lot of the book is kind of set, just the number of hours that I have observed volunteers doing quite a lot, but but in the service of maintaining something exactly the same way as it has always been. So it's not like they're, you know, adding new things in any sort of obvious way.
And I don't know, for me, I think the ideal form of doing nothing, I think that it's a couple of things. One is, I think it has to be something with no, no obvious goal. And that's one of the reasons I mentioned, Pauline Oliveros, the musician and sound artist who coined the term deep listening, because she talks about this practice of deep listening as being a necessary thing to learn in this culture, because we prize judgment and like immediate judgment and analysis versus just kind of open ended listening, where you really don't, you don't assume that, you know, it's there. And you're just open and receptive to whatever is around you. And I think that can take on so many different forms for different folks. And depending on what makes you comfortable, the kind of spaces you feel comfortable and what you like doing, but, you know, for me, it's bird watching. And I think birdwatching is an easy example. Because you go out yet, like, I guess you sort of have the goal of seeing birds but but it's just as a practice, it requires you to just be quiet and observant and ready to be surprised at any moment. It's very, I think it's a very humbling thing to do. And furthermore, at the end of that time, it's not like I have anything to, I don't have any “results”, right? Like, I don't have any sort of score to add to anything. It's just kind of like this was time that I spent in observation.
So I think that's, you know, the lack of goal is one part of it. And then I would say the other part is something where you kind of lose like those boundaries in itself, it become a little bit fuzzy. So again, to go back to birdwatching, like that's just something that I personally experienced when I do that is like, I'm not thinking about Jenny Odell. When I, when I'm birdwatching, I'm not thinking about myself at all. And yet, I think that it's a very intense experience of the self just in relationship to my surroundings. And it's often in those moments that I kind of, remember, like, really obvious things, like I'm alive, I will not always be alive. I live on, you know that I live on the Earth, like these really sort of basic fundamental things that I think it's actually easy to go a long time without remembering any of those things. So I would say, for me, like the most ideal version of doing nothing is something where you can access that feeling as well.
Ayana Young Yeah, losing the self. It's so relieving. Yeah, it's something I try to do every day very often, just to get out of my own way to live life. And, yeah, I think about our generation and the ones after, and our bodies have been incredibly abused by a consumer-driven society. Especially for younger ones, who through technology, media, and entertainment have been severed from the sensuous world at such an early age...And not just the impacts to our physical body, but I think our minds are in a very abusive relationship with media as well, so many of us find ourselves in this place where we get anxious from being present; to be without distraction has become foreign, but alternatively, we’re also anxious on social media. And so we’re caught between these two forms of anxiety, but it just so happens that social media is much more addictive. So, how does nothingness become a form of rehabilitation and a way to actually practice embodiment as well under this scenario?
Jenny Odell It's funny that you use the word addictive, because I think some of what I'm describing in the book is like finding something that falls into this category of nothing. That is, that is also addictive. You know, it's just something that's not destroying you. And so like, I, I don't know if I would ever use the word addictive to describe my relationship to birdwatching, but I do also sometimes describe myself as an involuntary birdwatcher, which is, you know, because I actually can't help but look for birds all the time. And 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. But there are a lot of birds, like, I'm not going to want to go back. I will stay until the last minute. And so I think that actually, you know, the word nothing, it sounds very inert. But I think the trick is to sort of find something like this that exerts a comparable pull on you. And like I said, I think that that is something that it's very different for, for anyone based on you know, what they're interested in, you know, like, basically like finding some kind of rabbit hole, that that just sustains you instead of driving you into this, like a wheel of anxiety. And it sounds difficult, but I, I don't think it actually is I think, I think we're drawn to things that make us feel good, or things that right now that make us feel just better.
I mean, I'm just thinking personally, of times when, you know, I was really sort of caught in this shallow attention for a long time, you know, probably working too hard, and just not being kind to myself. And then just, you know, having and having my attention be very scattered. And then just having maybe like a two hour conversation with a friend. And the relief that you feel at you know, during that conversation and afterwards and how different a way of being that is from how you were before, I don't think you soon forget that. And so I think just being attentive to and then seeking out the circumstances in which your attention is absorbed by something else, or someone else that can hold it, and maybe it takes a bit of searching to find out what that is. I also think there's no such potential and finding and connecting with others who share those interests. So you know, like, I have gone on a couple of birding field trips with the Golden Gate Audubon Society and just like being together with a, you know, a small group of people that are all really focused on this one kind of duck or something that we're all looking for. That's just such a nourishing experience compared to this platform that is designed to also hold my attention but doesn't really do anything for me and actually actively saps my energy and, you know, leaves me feeling depressed and anxious.
Ayana Young Yeah, I don't think you are alone in that. And I think too, with birdwatching, looking for ducks. There's something to that. It brings our attention to the natural world to actually what does literally sustain us. Yeah, I think that even the way our eyes adjust to the Earth and the colors of the forest or the sky or the soil compared to the light of a screen. And you know, there, there's just so much to that and you write how “doing nothing”, isn’t a one-time event where you turn off your phone for 48 hours or permanently rebuke all technology, because most of us can’t afford these luxuries, which I really appreciate you acknowledging, and in lieu of this you present “refusal-in-place”, which suggests that if we are indeed within the attention economy, we must practice how to live well within it. Can you talk a bit about how refusal requires degrees of latitude, as well as what perpetual refusal looks like in practice for you?
Jenny Odell Yeah, yeah, it was important for me to acknowledge that, you know, different folks have different margins of refusal, as I think I also call it, you know, I don't want to make any assumptions about anyone's need or desire to use social media. For example, like someone who works in media, right, like a journalist has to have, you know, typically has to have an online presence for all sorts of reasons, or you even all your friends are on social media and you feel like you need to be there to participate, there are all kinds of reasons that you would not be able to just kind of like, as I, as I say, like, throw your phone in the ocean, and then run away. And so, I think that, for me, the kind of refusal in place, it has to do with perspective, and trying to gain perspective. And, and also making, as I say, it's not a one time event, trying to make that into a sort of discipline or practice.
So, you know, just to borrow, like, from a physical example, I live at the bottom of a hill, and I have been 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 hope to the top of the hill, there's an intersection where I can, if it's clear, I can see the Bay of San Francisco. And I can see San Francisco and the mountains behind it, if it's clear enough. And I think I'm doing that to sort of like, orient myself spatially. But also, there's something that I think we, a lot of us intuitively have experienced, which is like, we always do that, right, like we walk to the top of the hill to look at, you know, the environment in which we just were from a different angle. And that gives us some kind of feeling of understanding that we weren't able to have when we were kind of in the middle of it. And for me personally, like that's an experience that I have sought, like over and over again, when I was doing more visual art, a lot of it involves satellite imagery, and maps, and looking at things from weird angles, like this is just kind of like a thing that I've been obsessed with for a long time.
And I think what happened with How to do Nothing was that I realized that it went from being an artistic interest to like a survival skill, which is like, if you live in the midst of something that you don't, you don't agree with, you sort of can't come to terms with, is harmful, you know, like the attention economy, there is this kind of relationship in which you, you don't completely exit, but you also don't participate in the way that you're supposed to. And you always kind of maintain this weird, kind of like, strange perspective on it. And that may require you to just kind of like mentally even just like ask new questions over time where this thing that should never feel familiar will always should always seem a little bit off, right, like a little bit alien, was kind of like what I was saying earlier about stepping away from something for a little bit, and then it very quickly starts to seem pretty strange. So just kind of maintaining that as an active discipline. And I say discipline, because it's something that I think you have to do continuously over and over again, basically just trying not to fall into a habitual way of being. And I'm saying that in the context of the attention economy, but I also think that that's just a good thing to do in life, in my experience is to not fall into habitual ways of thinking and to always kind of be almost like poking yourself and and trying to see the thing that you weren't seeing or see the thing that you're used to from a new angle. And I think this is what has helped me not kind of fall into that groove that social media so expertly sets up for me.
Ayana Young In addition to refusal-in-place you chronicle how bioregionalism and reframing our attention is an antidote to the attention economy. You write, “The reason I suggest the bioregion as a meeting ground for our attention is not simply because it would address species loneliness, or because it enriches the human experience or even because I believe our physical survival may depend on it. I value bioregionalism for the even more basic reason that, just as attention may be the last resource we have to withhold, the physical world is our last common reference point.” And we so desperately need common reference points…Can you elaborate a bit more on why you link your critique of the attention economy to bioregionalism? Does this focus prevent us from replicating consumer conditioning?
Jenny Odell I think that, for me, bioregionalism is useful as a model, like a conceptual model. But then, I shouldn't use the word useful, It's, I guess, I would say that it's important to me, metaphorically and concretely, so metaphorically, as a sort of model. I think, if you pay a lot of attention to your bioregion, or anything in your bioregion, it forces you to acknowledge complexity and reciprocal relationships. And it also kind of troubles the idea of like a bounded entity.
So like, this is a sort of weird example, but just the other day, I was walking to the top of the hill. And I saw all of these birds in a tree, like every bird I've ever seen in this neighborhood was in this one tree, and they were all going nuts. And then I realized that they were all eating these moths. And then I looked at the moths, and the moths were all like spawning out of this spot on the ground, like hundreds of moths were just flying up into the air, and getting eaten by these birds. And I had never noticed that before. That's just a small example of like, okay, you say you're a bird watcher, at some point, you're going to have to expand out from birds to, you know, trees and plants and moths and bugs. And then you'll also have to start to acknowledge seasons and microseasons. And you'll have to look at a map that's larger than the area where you live. And it just kind of like any, any point you pick in a bioregion is going to branch outward like that. And so I think it's a really helpful model for relearning how to see and appreciate complexity and interdependent relationships.
I also find it useful as a model of what I call difference without boundary. So there's different bioregions, but there's no hard line between them. And that's something that I very much appreciate, as a bi-racial person, who is similarly kind of in between two distinct backgrounds. And then I think, like, more concretely, everyone lives in a bio region, it may, depending on where you are, and kind of access you have to outdoor space, which is, you know, very, very variable, there are signs around you at any time of where you are, I would also include in this even things like, you know, I've been getting really into geology, so like learning about, like, the shape of this hill that I've been walking up, like, why is there a hill here, so I would also include that, but I think just it's something I often use the term like grabbing a hold of, it's something you can grab a hold of, it's, you know, it's there, it's under your feet, or it's in front of you. And it also exists sort of a priori like it's not, it's not something that was engineered to hold your attention. It's just there. It was there before you, it was there before us and it's and it has, you know, its own temporalities.
Something I've been thinking about a lot during the pandemic is like observing the small and large signs of the seasons changing. And I just think it's I don't know for me it's like felt like a lifeline in times when my attention was kind of stuck in this loop or I was feeling very kind of alienated or disembodied just simply letting my attention subtle on these you know, physical observable and you know, sensible in many different ways, entities but also relationships between entities. And that's just Yeah, like I said, it's been a lifesaver for me.
Ayana Young There is a line in How to Do Nothing, that really struck me and I think will resonate with our listeners as well, you write; “If you become interested in the health of the place where you are, whether that’s cultural or biological or both, I have a warning: you will see more destruction than progress”, which draws upon Aldo Leopold’s articulation of a world of wounds, and I think about this in context to smaller scales of attention, and I wonder if downsizing our scales of attention could actually soften some of the blows of living in the ruins, and sort of hold us as we reintegrate into the world and reclaim our attention?
Jenny Odell Yeah, I mean, again, just during the pandemic, like, in addition to the kind of changing of the seasons, like one thing that I have been really attentive to is, again, not everyone is into bird watching, I have to acknowledge, but for me, like, the experience of seeing certain birds is one of it's just joy, you know, like, I mean, that's really the only word that I can think of, to describe it. And, and it's really strange in a way to experience that in the midst of a larger concern about the decline in birds, I recently wrote a, I guess it wasn't that recent, really, this year, I wrote a review for the Atlantic of a book by Jennifer Ackerman about bird behavior. And, you know, that book is a combination of like, wonder at all of these new kinds of inexplicable things, that we're learning about what birds can do at the same time that, you know, there's such a huge decline in bird populations. And so it sounds kind of difficult to square those two. But I think that actually, the daily experience of these encounters with birds, which for the time being are still in my neighborhood, is actually what sustains me enough to live in that world in which there's, you know, in which I am so concerned about them, and then there's a lot to be sort of frightened and angry and anxious about, I think that it can be easy to forget the importance of those small moments of joy, where you sort of remember, like, what it is that you're fighting for in the first place. And I think there's a real risk of losing that and sort of just living in this grind of despair, which, again, is very lucrative for the attention economy, among other things. But yeah, I think that it's only more important now to, you know, not, of course, not lose sight of, of these issues, that feel quite crushing, but but to also experience like, in these kind of small spaces within that, just like appreciation and love and gratitude for, for, for those, you know, for what you what is in front of you, and what is around you.
Ayana Young Gosh, that is so important. It's like we can lose this entire Earth while being distracted on a screen of an earth that isn't real on that screen. I remember seeing this cartoon of this guy looking at his computer screen, and there was a forest, but outside his window was a bunch of stumps. And yeah, it's just so important. And in your writing you often, and talk in this interview, you know, even talking about the companionship and guidance that birdwatching has provided you over the years, and I think it is always important to underscore the ways in which our attention to the more-than-human world really sustains us, And I also think about, you know, yeah, just kind of going back to this cartoon. It's like a step further, I think. We know how to make reels and shopping tabs. And, you know, we noticed the shopping tab on Instagram, we notice it, we know how to create igtv. But yet, we don't know the bird species around us. We don't know their song, we don't know what they look like. And 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. So yeah, I don't have a direct question there. But just hearing your last response and kind of getting in that rabbit hole of the knowledge that our attention brings us and how it's not it is for our psychological health, but it actually is also for our very survival to notice what's around us, like in the actual real world. So yeah, I'll pause there before I really go down that hole. But anything you want to add? I'm interested to hear it.
Jenny Odell I mean, I will say that, you know, I mentioned earlier that utopian social media, it is still difficult for me to imagine that but I think it's also true that there are uses of, you know, uses of online connection that actually can help with things like this. So you know, I mentioned Inaturalist at one point in the book, which is the app that lets you identify plants, and if you're lucky animals, and which has been huge for me in terms of like becoming familiar with my, with my bioregion, like the ability to not only like take a photo but also and then it gives you it lets you guess. So it or it gives you some guesses you choose one and then usually a person who is kind of certified to do so will confirm or deny within a couple of days depending on how popular it is where you are.
But I went to an Inaturalist happy hour at one point, and it was like, really, I met the person who had been confirming a lot of my naturalist observations. And and then you know, there's like, I've just noticed things like, on the Golden Gate Audubon Society email list, there's this kind of, like, feeling of a community of people that's looking out for, for example, like a specific species, you know, just kind of talking about like, “Oh, you know, I've noticed that fewer of these have showed up this year. Has anyone else noticed that?” Kind of, like coordination of like, attention, right. And, and also being able to respond right to, there's some kind of like, problem or threat. So I think that that's an example of the ways in which I think just, you know, technology or sort of online connection in itself, you know, it can sort of be used for it can be used in multiple directions, it doesn't always have to be this kind of nefarious, distracting thing that's so divorced from the physical world. Like, I think there are ways in which my favorite example of a piece of technology is binoculars, because it allows me to see something that I can't see with my unaided eye. And so there's ways of thinking about technology that I think can be in support of this identification with the natural world.
Ayana Young Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And it's, it's, technology may not be an evil in and of itself. In fact, maybe some people would argue at that. But yeah, In your article “Why Birds Do What They Do” for the Atlantic, you talk about birdwatching in the cemetery near your house, and how it provides this sense of erasure, and the feeling of absolving oneself from the world. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the soft power that melding ourselves into the world provides as we dismantle human supremacy, but this example at the cemetery speaks of a sort of imagined erasure, and I’m curious to hear about that practice as well, even if it is just in small temporary moments?
Jenny Odell Yeah, I mean, I used the word humbling earlier. And I think that when you, you know, there's a form of birdwatching, I think I'd say this in the book that's a little bit like Pokemon Go, right? Like, it's like, I got that one, I got that one. And you're kind of going down the list. And it feels it still feels very acquisitive to me. Like you're acquiring something. And whereas, like my sort of preferred form of birdwatching, I mean, don't get me wrong, I get really excited when I see a new species for the first time. But you know, I also have known these crows on my street for, you know, now for years. Family of crows and crows are, you know, supposedly, a very common bird. Although, you know, there are also some by human measures of intelligence there, they're very intelligent and can recognize faces and all this.
But all of that aside, you know, I, I think the more time I spend with them and observing them and their behavior over the years, it's not like I have some, it's not like I'm grasping them or I can understand them better. It actually increases the complexity that I see when I look at them. And at some point, it sort of flips things where, you know, they are to me, like the biggest reminder that I'm an animal, and that when they look at me, they see an animal. You know, the crow and I are animals. And it really yeah, like I said, it kind of flips that that relationship I think we're really used to seeing the animal world is sort of subordinate to humans and not lacking an agency and just sort of like things in the world. I think if you spend enough time, you know, anyone who has a pet probably understands this, right? Like, who hasn't looked at their pet and wondered, like, What are you thinking, but it's like this kind of moment in which you, it's not that you're able to see the world through their eyes, it's almost, it's the understanding that you, you can never see the world through their eyes, there's a completely different way of being in the world that you will never understand. And yet these two ways of being in the world, but like, staring at each other. And I think that's really, it's humbling because it dissenters, you and it sort of is it makes you just one piece of this larger puzzle, like you're just another animal. Of course, you know, I say “just another animal”, meanwhile, humans are like destroying the Earth. But in that sort of moment is just kind of like a reminder that you don't actually have any kind of inherent primacy. These are the other beings.
Ayana Young Well, Jenny, for my final question, I want to talk about what you call “manifest dismantling” and the necessity of reframing progress and invention. As you conclude How to Do Nothing, you write; “Nineteenth-century views of progress, production, and innovation relied on an image of the land as a blank slate where its current inhabitants and systems were like so many weeds in what was destined to become an American lawn. But if we sincerely recognized all that was already here, both culturally and ecologically we start to understand that anything framed as construction was actually also destruction.” Can you speak to how boycotting the attention economy also means tangible and intangible commitments to place and a sort of repair in the form of unraveling?
Jenny Odell Yeah, I mean, I think that one, one example of this, you know, one example of the fact that dealing with the attention economy requires actions that would have to happen outside of the sphere of what we would consider it the attention economy is just access to a sense of place. So I talked a little bit in that chapter about the disparate access to outer space that happens, you know, for example, in Oakland there are far fewer parks in West Oakland, than where I am, you know, when you think about someone who lives in the hills versus someone who lives next to the port. And 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. Meanwhile, 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 a phone. So there's these kinds 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. So that's part of the reason that I end the book by talking about this park that I feel like really encapsulates all of these things.
It's Middle Harbor Shoreline Park. And 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. And then basically the port that turned it into a park. And in doing so it had to, it had been dredged, so they had to recreate a kind of beach that would have been there. And so that's work, right, like putting up the work of returning something to how it used to be or just taking something out, like dismantling something. And then all of these shorebirds showed up. It's still actually a really great place for bird watching. But it also has a tower that's named after Chappell Hayes, who was someone who was very instrumental in bringing awareness to Oakland of environmental racism, especially with the port being right next to us, Oakland.
So there's that sort of monument as well. It's a kind of observation tower, so you can walk up there and kind of see the whole park. And then, you know, just in a more basic sense, it's apartments in West Oakland. So it's a space for reflection, it's a space for community with other communities, with the birds who are visiting. And, like to me, like when I think of what my definition of productive is, like, that's what it is, is that park, it's something that you know, was restored and a lot of work went into that restoration. And then it's also something that's acknowledging, you know, it's acknowledging harm that's been done. And so, you know, it's like, I, I don't really want to use the language of like, I try not to use the language of forward and backward, but I think if you subscribe to the kind of Manifest Destiny version of like, linear progressive history, it will look like turning back, it will look like turning around and going backwards.
But I think that, that it only looks that way, from that point of view, from the point of view of like, health and flourishing and acknowledgement and justice, like, it's just, it's just improvement. I don't really know what else to call it. And it is productive, it's productive of, of meaning, and you know, acknowledgement of things that should have been acknowledged. So yeah, for me, that's that's kind of the best example. And I was really heartened to see yesterday that there are some dams on the Klamath that are like, maybe one step closer to being dismantled. I have the example of the dam that's dismantled in the Carmel Valley in my book, but I think, you know, that's like a really literal example is like, just literally like taking down a structure in order to restore habitat for fish and, and other beings. So like, I just think examples abound of like just removing something that just needs to be removed. To me, that's like a step, quote, unquote, forward.
Ayana Young Absolutely. I'm so excited about the Klamath dam news this week. And I'm praying that it follows through with the mission of taking down those dams, I think, I think there's something like 70,000 dams across the United States, and we got to take them down, especially when we still have access to fossil fuels. Got to take them down. So yeah, that's such a wonderful note to end on. Thank you, Jenny. for your time. This has been such an important conversation that I feel like everybody listening will feel connected to in one way or the other.
Jenny Odell Thank you so much. It's been my pleasure.
Francesca Glaspell Thank you for listening to For The Wild Podcast. The music you heard today was by Harrison Foster, Bosques Fragmentados, Samara Jade, and Kritzkom. For The Wild is created by Ayana Young, Erica Ekrem, Francesca Glaspell, and Melanie Younger