In a world where addictive technology is designed to buy and sell our attention, and our value is determined by our 24/7 data productivity, it can seem impossible to escape. But in this inspiring field guide to dropping out of the attention economy, artist and critic Jenny Odell shows us how we can still win back our lives.

Odell is an artist, writer, and educator whose work focuses on close observation of the everyday world. She is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock and How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. Odell about sees our attention as the most precious—and overdrawn—resource we have. How to Do Nothing is an action plan for thinking outside of capitalist narratives of efficiency and techno-determinism. Provocative, timely, and utterly persuasive, this book will change how you see your place in our world.

Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Odell about paying a new kind of attention, undertaking bolder forms of political action, reimagining humankind's role in the environment, and arriving at more meaningful understandings of happiness and progress.

"She struck a hopeful nerve of possibility that I hadn't felt in a long time."—Jia Tolentino, THE NEW YORKER

"This book will change how you see the world."—Malcolm Harris, author and Forum guest!

BUY THE BOOK. 

About the Guest

Jenny Odell is an artist, writer, and educator whose work focuses on close observation of the everyday world. She is the author of the New York Times bestsellers How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy and Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock. Her other writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and the Paris Review. Odell has been an artist in residence at the San Francisco Planning Department, the Internet Archive, and Recology SF (otherwise known as the dump), and her work has been exhibited internationally. From 2013 to 2021, she taught digital art at Stanford University.

About the Moderator

The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.

About The Forum

The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum's host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world.  Learn more about The Forum and upcoming discussions. You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum.