Wasting Time on the Internet

Kenneth Goldsmith is a conceptual artist, and the first poet laureate of the Museum of Modern Art. He is the author of Seven American Deaths and Disasters and the book of essays Uncreative Writing, breaking down the art form he pioneered. Goldsmith teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught the controversial "Wasting Time on the Internet" class that inspired this book. He lives in New York with artist Cheryl Donegan and their two sons.

For decades, Kenneth Goldsmith has forced us to question what constitutes and what does not constitute art. In Wasting Time on the Internet, he demonstrates persuasively and precisely the myriad ways in which the web undergirds contemporary art and ambitious contemporary art engages seriously with the implications of the web. -- David Shields, author of Reality Hunger: A Manifesto "The Internet made the world an intelligence and vastly increased my own. I got my theory from Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables, Wells' World Brain and McLuhan, but now I have the Internet instruction book: Wasting Time on the Internet. It's also a pretty good history of the future." -- Glenn O'Brien, author of The Style Guy and How To Be a Man "Deeply versed in avant garde and surreal modes of seeing and playing in the so-called "real world," Goldsmith proves a brilliant guide to the worlds we describe as digital or virtual. It's pure pleasure to browse and surf and swipe and poke at contemporary tech culture in his company." -- Rob Walker, co-editor Significant Objects "Entertaining, vividly written investigation of the ways people interact with the web... Goldsmith maintains a sharp focus as he weaves together wildly diverse ideas, explaining new information clearly for a general audience." -- Publishers Weekly "A persuasive argument about how what conventional wisdom dismisses as "wasting time" is actually time well spent" -- Kirkus Reviews