On Boredom

Boredom was invented in 1760. That is the year, according to academic Lars Svendsen in his excellent study A Philosophy Of Boredom, that the word was first in used in English. The other great invention of the time was the spinning jenny, which heralded the start of the Industrial Revolution. In other words, boredom arrives with the division of labour and the transformation of enjoyable autonomous work into tedious slave work. And we are very bored. Go into chat rooms and forums on the internet between three and five in the afternoon and you will find hundreds of posts from office workers reading, "Bored, bored, bored!" These pleas for help, these desperate entreaties from trapped spirits, are like messages in bottles, sent out into the oceans of cyberspace in the hope that someone out there may be able to do something to help. The odds, of course, are low.

Tom Hodgkinson, from Weekend, 16.09.06

(implied msg: stop emailing me that u r bored. I hear you. And sympathise. Alas, there's nothing to be done. And some of us actually have to work! :-P)