DEAR TIM(E)Research on microdosing as a form of entertainment
Although entertainment is widely covered through hyper-designed distractions, microdosing offers a tool to enhance the self and halt reality by embracing optimization. In the age of digital capitalism, after mediatization, the topic proves to be a spectacle in it of its own and functions as a form of counter-entertainment to its users.
This paper attempts to evaluate the topic of microdosing and the emerge of its practice as online communities cover the subject through self-reported results since 2008, followed by mass adoption and media coverage, microdosing as a buzzword provides sufficient content and commerce, as well as an expectation of perpetual growth-based economy that relies on the advancement of science to prove its positive effects.
Olga Tokarczuk
Fitzcarraldo, 2017.
translation Jennifer Croft
YOUR HEAD IN THE WORLD
Here we were taught that the world could be described, and even explained, by means of simple answers to intelligent questions. That in its essence the world was inert and dead, governed by fairly simple laws that needed to be explained and made public – if possible with the aid of diagrams. We were required to do experiments. To formuate hypotheses. To verify. We were inducted into the mysteries of statistics, taught to believe that equipped with such a tool we would be able to perfectly describe all the workings of the world – that ninety per cent is more significant than five.
p. 17
Here we were taught that the world could be described, and even explained, by means of simple answers to intelligent questions. That in its essence the world was inert and dead, governed by fairly simple laws that needed to be explained and made public – if possible with the aid of diagrams. We were required to do experiments. To formuate hypotheses. To verify. We were inducted into the mysteries of statistics, taught to believe that equipped with such a tool we would be able to perfectly describe all the workings of the world – that ninety per cent is more significant than five.
p. 17
SEEING IS KNOWING
The heart. All its mysteries has been conclusively revealed – for it’s that unshapely lump the size of a fist, its colour a dirty light brown. Please note that that is, in fact, the colour of our bodies: greyish brown, ugly. We would not want to have walls in our houses or a car that colour. It’s the colour of insides, of darkness, of places light can’t reac, where matter hides in moisture from others’ gazes, and there isn’t any point in it showing off. The only extravagance able to be afforded went to blood: blood is warning, its redness an alarm that the casing of the body has been breached. That continuity of the tissue has been broken. In reality, on the inside we have no colour. When the heart pumps out blood as it’s supposed to, blood looks just like snot.
p. 25
The heart. All its mysteries has been conclusively revealed – for it’s that unshapely lump the size of a fist, its colour a dirty light brown. Please note that that is, in fact, the colour of our bodies: greyish brown, ugly. We would not want to have walls in our houses or a car that colour. It’s the colour of insides, of darkness, of places light can’t reac, where matter hides in moisture from others’ gazes, and there isn’t any point in it showing off. The only extravagance able to be afforded went to blood: blood is warning, its redness an alarm that the casing of the body has been breached. That continuity of the tissue has been broken. In reality, on the inside we have no colour. When the heart pumps out blood as it’s supposed to, blood looks just like snot.
p. 25
PANOPTICON
The panopticon and the Wunderkammer, as I learned from a museum guide, are a rather venerable duo whose existence precedes that of museums. They exhibited collections of all types of curiosities that their owners had brought back from journeys to places near and far.
Nor should it be forgotten that Bentham chose ‘panopticon’ as the name for his brilliant system of prision surveillance; his goal was to construct a space that would ensure that every prisoner could be ceaselessly seen.
p. 39
The panopticon and the Wunderkammer, as I learned from a museum guide, are a rather venerable duo whose existence precedes that of museums. They exhibited collections of all types of curiosities that their owners had brought back from journeys to places near and far.
Nor should it be forgotten that Bentham chose ‘panopticon’ as the name for his brilliant system of prision surveillance; his goal was to construct a space that would ensure that every prisoner could be ceaselessly seen.
p. 39
EVERYWHERE AND NOWHERE
I think there are a lot of people like me. Who aren’t around, who’ve disappeared. They show up all of a sudden in the arrivals terminal and start to exist when the immigrations officers stamp their passport, or when the polite receptionist at whatever hotel hands over their key. By now they must have become aware of their own instability and dependence upon places, times of day, on language or on a city and its atmosphere. Fluidity, mobility, illusoriness - these are precisely the qualities that makes us civilized. Barbarians don’t travel. They simply go to destinations or conduct raids.
This opinion is shared by the woman offering me herbal tea from a thermos while we both wait for the bus from the train station to the airport; her hands are hennead in a complex design made less legible by each passing day. Once we’re on the bus, she sets out her theory of time. She says that sedentary peoples, farmers, prefer the pleasures of circular time, in which every object and event must return to its beginning, curl back up into an embryo and repeat the process of maturation and death. But nomads and merchants, as they set off on journeys, had to think up a different type of time for themselves, one that would better respond to the needs of their travels. That time is linear time, more practical because it was able to measure progress toward a goal or destination, rises in percentages. Every moment is unique; no moment can ever be repeated.
p. 58
I think there are a lot of people like me. Who aren’t around, who’ve disappeared. They show up all of a sudden in the arrivals terminal and start to exist when the immigrations officers stamp their passport, or when the polite receptionist at whatever hotel hands over their key. By now they must have become aware of their own instability and dependence upon places, times of day, on language or on a city and its atmosphere. Fluidity, mobility, illusoriness - these are precisely the qualities that makes us civilized. Barbarians don’t travel. They simply go to destinations or conduct raids.
This opinion is shared by the woman offering me herbal tea from a thermos while we both wait for the bus from the train station to the airport; her hands are hennead in a complex design made less legible by each passing day. Once we’re on the bus, she sets out her theory of time. She says that sedentary peoples, farmers, prefer the pleasures of circular time, in which every object and event must return to its beginning, curl back up into an embryo and repeat the process of maturation and death. But nomads and merchants, as they set off on journeys, had to think up a different type of time for themselves, one that would better respond to the needs of their travels. That time is linear time, more practical because it was able to measure progress toward a goal or destination, rises in percentages. Every moment is unique; no moment can ever be repeated.
p. 58
THE BOOK OF INFAMY
I looked down at my shoes. I wasn’t in a hurry. I never have to be in any particular place at any particular time. Let time watch me, not me it. And besides – there are different ways of making a living, but here a whole other dimension of employment opened up, perhaps the employment of the future, the kind of thing that would guard againt joblessness and the production of excessive waste.
p. 70
GUIDEBOOKS
Describing something is like using it – it destroys; the colours wear off, the corners lose their definition, and in the end what’s been described begins to fade, to
p. 75
Describing something is like using it – it destroys; the colours wear off, the corners lose their definition, and in the end what’s been described begins to fade, to
p. 75
PANOPTICON
The panopticon and the Wunderkammer, as I learned from a museum guide, are a rather venerable duo whose existence precedes that of museums. They exhibited collections of all types of curiosities that their owners had brought back from journeys to places near and far.
Nor should it be forgotten that Bentham chose ‘panopticon’ as the name for his brilliant system of prision surveillance; his goal was to construct a space that would ensure that every prisoner could be ceaselessly seen.
p. 39
The panopticon and the Wunderkammer, as I learned from a museum guide, are a rather venerable duo whose existence precedes that of museums. They exhibited collections of all types of curiosities that their owners had brought back from journeys to places near and far.
Nor should it be forgotten that Bentham chose ‘panopticon’ as the name for his brilliant system of prision surveillance; his goal was to construct a space that would ensure that every prisoner could be ceaselessly seen.
p. 39