There is a thesis statement early in the book that provides all the insight you can expect to glean from it: “Sleep is an irrational and intolerable affirmation that there might be limits to the compatibility of living beings with the allegedly irresistible forces of modernisation.” Beyond that, expect the pointless name-dropping of philosophers and classic literature, passages of florid metaphor that do not actually say anything interesting, and spurious claims about the future. I gave up milking meaning from this stone about halfway through. ( )

existe um estilo de prosa que parece indicar que a sociologia nada mais é que uma filosofia em alta velocidade, acelerada afim de dar conta do que ocorre na sociedade. mas o escaneamento que é assim obtido traça conexões a partir de ideias e não de dados – é uma profundidade para cima, adquirida por ascensão; não são informações cavadas a partir da superfície, mas conceitos desvelados sob uma visão do geral. e por mais que ambos os livros sejam interessantes e tenham ideias (han mais que crary), não deixo de ficar desapontado com 24/7, de jonathan crary, e a sociedade do cansaço, de byung-chul han; por parecerem sabichões, às vezes penso que escreveram meras opiniões. e então, como tudo passa rápido, boa parte é absorvido como puro achismo. ( )

24/7 examina las devastadoras consecuencias de los procesos productivos del capitalismo del siglo XXI sobre la capacidad de atención del individuo y la sociedad. Hoy, cuando tanto los procesos de producción como los sistemas de consumo disponen de los recursos para mantenerse operando las 24 horas del día, los 7 de la semana, la sociedad padece las consecuencias de un mercado cuyo perpetuo sentido de optimización amenaza con robarle el sueño a los hombres, y con ello, su capacidad de imaginar una realidad diferente.
Jonathan Crary analiza la manera en que la fractura entre los ciclos naturales de noche y día, vigilia y sueño, trastorna la nuestra capacidad para diferenciar entre unas condiciones de vida privilegiada y las estrategias de control y vigilancia implementadas por las formas de poder dominantes.(Editorial Planeta)

Enlaces:

https://cultura.nexos.com.mx/?p=8351

https://elpais.com/cultura/2015/05/20/actualidad/1432123650_805121.html ( )

Not long ago I was telling my ten-year-old daughter about the early days of the internet, back in the early 1990s, when the future of cyberspace was unknown. It was an optimistic time, with many people (it seemed) seeing the internet as a truly free "space" untainted by commercial concerns. The internet my daughter knows is far from that optimistic vision, with every website, app, game, or other networked creation saturated with advertising, purchases, and the like. Having come of age as an adult when the internet evolved, I find the current reality unfortunate but also unavoidable; the latter given the enormous number of people going online and therefore the enormous potential for companies to make money. With our waking lives split between work, home, and transit, and the internet having infiltrated each aspect, our only relief from being told what to buy (or our actions -- our browsing and seeing -- making money for others) is found in sleep. But Jonathan Crary writes that this apparently impenetrable part of our everyday lives could someday be infiltrated by military and/or neoliberal entities. If doubtful, just think of how smartphones have transformed our sleep, with many people checking their phones in the middle of a night's sleep. Or of how images we absorb during the day may enter our dreams alongside those formed from our "real-life" experiences. By delving into various aspects of our 24/7 reality via numerous philosophical foundations, Crary made me consider how apparently free choices are determined to a large degree by corporations seeking profit, but also how those same corporations have limitations (for now) over how much of our lives they impact. ( )

I wish I'd read the blurb more carefully before buying this book. Now I see that the author is a professor of modern art and theory which rather explains what I dislike about it and I feel much better abandoning it.

The first 47 pages are chock full of apparently empirical hypothesis which are not supported by evidence or tested by experiment but asserted by theorists of various stripes. That some of these claims come in for criticism (e.g. the revolutionary-ness of certain technological developments like mobiles with small screens) and others don't (e.g. various identifications of sleep, darkness, insomnia, etc. with assorted social, cultural, and theoretical phenomena) seems to be a matter of taste.

With the amount of ink the author devotes to the horrors of information and communication technologies I would *love* to know what he would make of that pre-mobile photo of a bus full of commuters all engrossed in newspapers that makes the rounds on Twitter and Facebook every few months.

In any case, I've wasted enough time on this; abandoned. ( )