Wasting time on the internet, now available in paperback

Online enticements often leave browsers ruing the time loss to social media and other forms of click bait. NewsWorks Tonight host Dave Heller sits down with Kenneth Goldsmith, a Penn professor teaching the course “Wasting Time on the Internet.”

The author of a book of the same name, Goldsmith pointed out that television in the 1960s, when he was a kid, and even the written word were at one time looked at as time wasters.

He said it’s not surprising that we have gotten to this point.

“I’m feeling like we are so wonderfully immersed in the internet and we use it so well without any practice,”  he said.

Many people wonder if our usage of the internet is good or bad; to Goldsmith, the answer is both.

“The web is sublimely stupid and also stupidly sublime, it’s actually all things at once.”

Goldsmith also addresses whether the web makes us less connected and Donald Trump’s relationship with the internet.