Institute Noted in Chronicle of Higher Education Article

Peter Wood recently had a commentary published in the Chronicle of Higher Education; he is a member of the National Scholars Association. It took note of The Boring Institute and its founder, Alan Caruba.. Our thanks to Mr. Wood.

Boring
January 06, 2011 By Peter Wood
This article was originally published on the Chronicle of Higher Education's Innovations blog.


I am among the fortunate—at least we think we are fortunate—who find lots of things interesting. People, ideas, places, objects, books (especially), history, coincidences, clouds, robots, speech, movement, things I understand, things I don’t. It is not that I flit from one to another in a whirl of distraction. Rather, I sink into whatever has caught my attention and have to be pried loose.  

This is not to say I am immune to boredom. I have high resistance to the big B, a threshold that allows me to look with rapt admiration alike on rooftop water towers and roadside cows. I once bought a book titled Boring Postcards, but felt taken. The picture of the Pennsylvania Turnpike in its youth, for example, radiates an innocent optimism.

But there are certain anti-stimuli that overwhelm even my well-honed capacity for fascination. PowerPoint, for instance. The instant a speaker commences to talk his way through bulleted slides, my eyelids feel the tug of gravity. Space-time wells up in an irresistible tide that draws me out beyond the shores of consciousness. Who invented this elixir of tedium?


At times I suspect it is an alien technology sent to Earth to prepare the way for The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. And who are these academics who willingly trade in their birthrights as people with something to say for the mess of pottage of nothing worth looking at?

PowerPoint by all rights should have been center stage at Boring 2010, the international conference held a few weeks ago in London. Indeed, it sounds as though many of the speakers were on top of their game. The Wall Street Journal reports that conference organizer James Ward gave the opening presentation about his collection of neckties, “accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation.” I, for one, would have been at risk of taking a lively interest in his cravats, and it is nice to know that Mr. Ward took the precaution of adding some anesthetizing technology to prevent errant enthusiasm from breaking out.

Staving off such enthusiasm can be a challenge. In 2008, Alan Caruba, founder of the Boring Institute, announced that after more than two decades of work, he was closing it down. The problem? Way too much interest. Caruba explained, “at the height of the Institute’s fame, I averaged a thousand radio interviews a year, all clustered around the various events, and even did some television appearances. I talked with radio hosts from Australia to England, New Zealand to Germany, and everywhere in America.” Caruba was not initially averse to the attention. He is, rather, like me, a natural taker-of-interest:

I am possessed of a mind that endlessly entertains me. I make myself laugh. I don’t know if others do this, but I find my thoughts either astonishingly profound or amusingly idiotic. Either way, I am always surprised.

But Caruba got tired of the game.

Or maybe not. Somehow his interest revived and the Boring Institute came roaring back. Caruba’s brand of cultural commentary is now attracting considerable attention and The Wall Street Journal article on the London conference is, of course, feeding the fascination.

Caruba dates the genesis of the Boring Institute to his watching a Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. My epiphany of boredom has always been New Year’s Eve, which as a child I experienced as an eternity of dumb television shows leading up the spectacularly empty moment of Guy Lombardo’s band, the Royal Canadians, playing Auld Lang Syne, as a ball full of light bulbs descended in Times Square. My life has been shaped by the need to escape that moment.

Does higher education have a boredom problem? Caruba argues that it does. “Americans at almost every age level sit through countless boring hours in school rooms, in college, attending endless business meetings, and at any one of the thousands of conferences held throughout the year.” The college part of that concerns me most.  I fear he is right.


College ought to be among the places where Boredom can’t find an inch of space to land and fold her matted wings. But the combination of mass production, doctrinaire teaching, careerist ambition, competition from the ersatz excitement of popular culture, and higher ed’s own addiction to deadening technology have welcomed her in.

Of course, we stave off the boredom of New Year’s by making resolutions. One of mine is to get invited to Boring 2011 to lecture (with PowerPoint!) on the need for Auld Lang
Syne studies in the core curriculum.

(c) Peter Wood

Don't Let This Happen To You!

Wall Street Journal Takes Notice of Boredom

Even the Wall Street Journal Takes Notice of Boredom

 “Boredom Enthusiasts Discover The Pleasures of Understimulaton” by Gautam Naik

December 29, 2010

It was nice of the author of a page one Wall Street Journal article about a December 11 event in London called Boring 2010 to mention The Boring Institute, says Alan Caruba, its founder.

 “Understandably,” said Caruba, “the bulk of the article reflected the event’s theme that boredom might be beneficial, if only to tune out the incessant overload of stimulation everyone experiences these days, but I disagree.”

Caruba, a former journalist and longtime public relations counselor founded The Boring Institute in 1984 as a media spoof and recently announced its annual list of “The Most Boring Celebrities of the Year.”  In the years since then, however, Caruba became an expert on boredom and, today, the Institute maintains a blog with much of it devoted to warning against the dangers of boredom and offering advice on how to avoid it.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the event’s organizer, James Ward, 29 years old, “works for a DVD distribution and production company” and the article focused the event’s seven hours of deliberately boring presentations by twenty speakers to an audience of some two hundred people who actually paid for the privilege.

A London-based public relations practitioner, Hamish Thompson, said, “It is quintessentially English to look at something dull and find it interesting.”

Caruba is more concerned that “Americans at almost every age level sit through countless boring hours in school rooms, in college, attending endless business meetings, and at any one of the thousands of conferences held throughout the year.”

 “Schools are virtual boredom factories and this accounts for an appallingly high dropout rate,” said Caruba, “while most business meetings are widely regarded as a waste of time.”

“Americans are so bored much of the time they seek diversion by paying attention to sports of every description or just mindlessly watching hours of television programming that often borders on the idiotic,” said Caruba.

Other Americans, however, find ways to avoid boredom that are far more beneficial. “Americans are some of the greatest hobbyists in the world and they frequently start or belong to organizations of others who share their particular hobby. Others love the outdoor life as avid walkers, joggers, hikers, mountain climbers, campers, hunters and fishers.”

The downside of American life, said Caruba, “are the many people who turn to alcohol and drugs to avoid having to cope with problems in their lives, creating a host of problems for others around them and for society in general.”

Caruba cites crime in America as often having a basis in boredom. “Aside from the criminal desire to steal, crime offers an element of excitement for those who engage in it as opposed to the routine of a job.”

Caruba, a founding member of the National Book Critics Circle, is encouraged that so many Americans take pleasure in reading. “New technology will encourage more people to read and make books even more accessible,” says Caruba. He posts a monthly report on new fiction and non-fiction at Bookviews.com.

Best known these days as a commentator on politics and issues ranging from energy to national security, Caruba’s daily blog, factsnotfiction.blogspot.com, is shared by national and international news and opinion websites and blogs.

“At any age, from infancy to the senior years, it is essential for everyone to keep mentally engaged with the world,” said Caruba. “Boredom is your mind telling you that you are not feeding it and growing its capacity to learn. Failure to do this will cause your mind to find often self-destructive ways to deal with it.”