In the kingdom of the bored, the one-armed bandit is king

It still feels a little shameful to admit to the fact, but what engages us more and more is not the content but the mechanism.Kenneth Goldsmith, in a Los Angeles Review of Books essay,writesof arecent day whenhe felt an urgeto listen to some music:

I wasin the mood to listen to the music of the American mid-century composer Morton Feldman. I dug into my MP3 drive, found my Feldman folder and opened it up. Amongst the various folders in the directory was one labeled “The Complete Works of Mor...