Guest Editor: Kostis Velonis, Equastk, Associate Professor of ASKT
This summer a tweet released viral: "The mobile addiction has reached such a point that watching a movie looks productive." 1)
The wording, though it appears as humorous, touches one of the central features of modern everyday life. The most immediate reading of this message is related to the difficulty of staying in an activity with duration, due to continuous exposure to small and immediate stimuli that offers social media. However, the most interesting point lies elsewhere: in reversing the values that leads to perceive the watching a film as a "productive" act.
But the paradox is not that we cannot watch a movie until the end without the secondment by another medium; it is that the dedication to the screening of a film is recorded as a productive act.
We are in front of an informal but daily repetitive tendency to have to justify with a purpose every moment, to be included in an invisible accounting sheet of time.
Perhaps the biggest challenge is not just to learn to concentrate but to regain the ability to exist without apologizing for our time.
Modern obsession with "productivity" is not just a practical habit; it has become a source of anxiety that works relentlessly to all owners of a mobile phone. In addition, what makes things more complicated is that we perceive free time in terms of investment, as something it must perform, even if it is simply the illusion that we did something. Thus, even art, even rest, are transformed into variations of work.
Addiction to the smartphone, then, is not just about a split problem. It reveals the deepest anxieties of a time: the belief that life is constantly attributed to and that every moment when it is not measured in terms of productivity is equivalent to loss.
Perhaps the biggest challenge is not just to learn to concentrate but to regain the ability to exist without apologizing for our time.
As this message on X is intrigued, and I had even posted it on the increasingly desirable Facebook, I turned to the blog of Helena Aeberli, which comments on issues of online culture and had also watched the same viral.2
The author argues that her life has been trapped in an obsession with productivity, where even leisure is turned into a "duty".
It does not take much thought to find that we are confronted with a tendency to add to short content, especially when it comes from platforms such as Tiktok and other social media. However, I would not want to passively accept the idea that we are incapable of accessing these "technologies of evil". It is extremely critical to begin to deconstruct the grammar of the so -called "attention economy" in order to regain the ability to emancipate, though it seems simplistic. I am referring to the possibility of attention as an act that derives from our own will and not the urgent appeals of the device.
It is now clear that "productivity" does not only mean work in the context of working hours and pay, but has become a rhythm of life, into sense and ultimately into identity. In this context, my argument is that the artist has a privileged margin with which he may choose not to be exposed to the hysteria of productivity and, more than anyone else, recognize that the possibility of "not doing" is part of the creative process. The integrated project, in its peak, is not a tool activity; it does not serve a specific purpose in the way a machine is useful.
The artist's "comment" - the time of silence, waiting, experimentation - is a time of opening the form and the way in which he finally becomes a conscience.
Here art meets "non-pretext", not as a resignation but as a denial of slavery with necessity. Isn't the work of art, not inactivating the normal functioning of the world? Today, when the work invades the free time and the eight -hour collapses, this finding seems even more urgent.
But it's not just work. If the motivation for productivity has swallowed our free time, the work of art under the terms of "comment" contributes to the interruption of the imaginary line of continuing productivity.
The critical distinction we have to do today is not so much about the type of activity, but the choice between productivity and non-productivity. A constant alert condition is needed, especially when we seem to be surrendered to the fun pattern of endless slicing. There are well -founded reasons to question the ideological project of modern society, which today seems to have been completed: the claim of continuous productivity.
I am referring to the right of unfairness, the abstinence of any direct indirect production of content on socials, the right to complete isolation from digital interconnections.
Non-productivity does not constitute a loss, but it can be seen as a form of resistance to the ideological and psychological pressure of uninterrupted production. It is certain that in modern life we remain captive to "tyranny of the real", where social prestige depends on the intensification of activity and the accumulation of anxiety.
Without the re -evaluation of the commentary and stochastic dimension of inaction, society remains trapped in a mechanical logic of production and performance.
However, at this point things become more complex. I would like to insist a little further into the difference between the "comment" with the "school" and to see their common geographical roots in ancient Athens to observe the evolution of the comment in something systematic and organized.
The word "school", derived from "Scholi", initially meant "free time", that is, time dedicated to rest and holiday. On the contrary is the "occupation" (with the deprivation A-), that is, the situation in which, due to duties and occupation, no free time remains.
In ancient Athens, the school gained a new meaning: the luxury of discussion, the meeting with thinking of a community that were able to be educated through cross -legged knowledge and critical positions. The education was therefore linked to the school not as an institutional function with formal representation, but as a collective practice that could be transferred from the public market to private home.
As for the first time in Athens under the influence of the sophists, books are purchased and read, as well as libraries, we observe a change in the field of representations.
The deceased is no longer only depicted as an athlete or warrior, but also with a book in the hands; that is, as a man of reflection. This shift is not accidental, signals the establishment of a new perception of the prestige of knowledge and the role of the study. 3
It is interesting that Socrates and Plato have opposed the dissemination of the books, seeking to preserve the value of personal exchange, dialogue, living discourse, reminiscent of the concerns of those who defend the book to digital applications and technologies.4
The reason I insist on this distinction is that the school, which evolved into a school, was - and must remain - the time that is not subordinate to necessity. But it should not be identified with the concept of passive inactivity, as it is often perceived today. On the contrary, it is the time of thinking, the notification through discussion, observation and contemplation.
In practice, perhaps here is the only point of differentiation: the comment is primarily concerned with the individual, as it involves the process of reflection, while the school is formed as a social institution of learning and exchange. The comment is therefore not a collective obligation, but a valuable possibility of personal processing and internal freedom.
It may not be pointless to associate this figure with the role of politics, as Pericles defined it in the epitaph. There, the emphasis is placed on multiplicity, that is, the active participation in the market and the church of the municipality. If the comment allows for reflection and spiritual deepening, politics, as Pericles means it, encourages active act and public contribution. Thus, a creative tension is erased between the individual time of thought and the collective time of action.
If today we are looking for a correspondence of ancient multiplicity in the simultaneous perception cultivated in the sphere of the media, applications and social networks, it is clear that market investment scenarios are not related to the argument of social motivation of active participation, as it emerged in the "golden age" of the Golden Age. On the contrary, their aim is to constantly involve the user in the flow of information, images and data.
The irony is that a formal acceptance of Pericles' Epitaph, with his reference to the multifaceted and active citizen, when transferred to today's conditions, ends up being equated with the "active" use of the digital market. But this transfer does not lead to the strengthening of the identity of the citizen; on the contrary, it contributes to its discount and submission to the financial interests of companies that manage the data and the time of its engagement with platforms.
It is important to get rid of the graphic depiction of the "public space", a often disturbed condition, projected with anachronistic sensitivity and refers to central squares, neighborhoods or urban centers. Today's "active" public space is not limited to them or probably does not even exist. It manifests itself in conditions of complete intimacy: when one enjoys a movie on Netflix with friends, while everyone is squeezing on their cellphone. Here the collectivity is not constituted around dialogue or political action, but through the parallel fragmentation of attention, in a mix of coexistence and isolation.
On the other hand, its school and its evolution to the school constitute options that react to the "noise" of the market. The difference in the perception of these practices is also reflected in Euripides' drama. In Antipi (408 BC), a work that is surviving, we follow the dialogue between the twin brothers, Zithos and Amphion, who grew up in Kithironas as shepherds. Zithos, more practical and oriented to work, scolds his brother because he prefers music to plowing and building. The contrast is clear: the active man of political and agricultural life over the artist who chooses silence, theory and withdrawal.
The same theme also returns to Ion (413 BC). The protagonist defends the virtue of tranquility without glory, without glory, as opposed to political alterations and ambitions of the city's demagogues.
In the geographical and cultural context of Athens, for the first time so clearly, the unfaithfulness as an existing choice that deviates from the model of Pericles and the active citizen of the market.
Ion, with remarkable wisdom, rejects the glory and wealth proposed by his father and chooses an honorable life away from the Athenian state. He prefers to remain in Delphi, in a space that more symbolizes reflection and spirituality than the active participation in the political and social scene.
Today, when we talk about the artist, we usually focus on inspiration, talent or "work". But we rarely recognize that every project requires a year that is not necessarily productive. It presupposes a kind of parking, a conscious slowdown by the constant deadlines and acceleration mechanisms that have been established through the annoying alerts of the mobile and the continuous demand to look constantly busy, present, with the camera focusing on us.
This anxiety everyday experience of time surpasses us is analyzed by the German political scientist Hartmut Rosa, who considers it a central feature of late modernity: a sense of enduring acceleration (Beschleunigung). 5
The great price is not just physical or mental fatigue, but the permanent sense of inadequacy against social demands.
Using the concept of alienation as Marx defined it, Rosa shows how the lives of subjects is increasingly mediated by rational competition and self-sustaining. The life that is shaped by "Run and I don't arrive" is a desperate attempt to maintain the "stay in the race". The result is that the formation of a coherent life plan is becoming increasingly precarious.
The artist-like any other creative subject-having conquered that special position in the limits between productivity and the possibility of non-pretext, often experiences the feeling that it is not enough to simply create and enjoy. He has to post, promote, count the likes, since social networks have turned the relationship with art into a "production routine"
The privileged moment of inactivity, that is, in which the artist can park against the work, process it with his eyes and thinking without "working" directly on it, is destroyed by the demand for performance. The enjoyment of the moment must be justified, translated into content that will validate the process of implementing the project itself, or even exceed it. Each thoughtful moment translates into a content demonstration.
But even in the emotional field, the digital self appears more attractive, as the subject perceives himself as a range of roles that must adapt to every occasion, abolishing the concept of nuclear self. This is a highlight of sociologist Eva Illouz, when describing the "romantic networks" of dating websites and dating apps in her work "Cold Tree. The rise of emotional capitalism ', a study of logic that connects emotions with capital.6
This "spectral self" is attractive because it promises flexibility, constant renewal and chances; but at the same time dissolves the sense of a core of self. Even in the field of art, this logic means that the work is not only as creation, but it is intended to appear on feeds to be measured in likes, to fetishize as content.
At this point, it is worth pointing out that there is a fundamental difference in inactivity as a release from any work, and the "inactivity" associated with scrolling. Being inactive means to consume without producing. However, scrolling is never really inactive; it produces a profit for technology companies. In other words, even the apparent non-productivity is part of an economic exploitation circuit.
And while scrolling looks like inaction - because the body remains immobilized, the fingers are mechanically moving on the screen and time is "lost" - it actually functions as the modern version of the market: a space for projection, competition, but also for some professional groups, a framework for social and economic survival. In a matter of seconds, each post has to impress, draw attention, turn - with the sender's wish - into "successful content". Thus, the comment never comes spontaneously and effortlessly; it is constantly undermined by the urgent need for projection.
The crisis faced by the current mobile user is not related to the possibility of sinking into inorxiety. On the contrary, the risk is to do too much, too fast, and usually without depth. To produce before he can think about.
Popaganda
Notes
1 EXTINCT (@FFS_ABDULLAH), "Phone Addiction Got so Bad That Watching A Movie Feels Productive", X (formerly Twitter), 12 July 2025, 3:26
2 Helena Aeberli, The End of Leisure What does not mean to 'Feel Productive' Twentyfirst Century Demoniac, Jul 19, 2025
3 This is something that shapes not only life but also the way it is resident. In the late 5th century BC, for example, the contrast between the home and the city finds corresponding to the distinct roles of the sexes. However, with the appearance of the peristyle, "male" values invade privacy, and discussions are no longer limited to the market, but also take place in the family home. Housing begins to change; the economy of the house becomes public. Peristyle houses offer discussion space, in addition to practical needs. The private space is transformed into a place of theoretical life and, in this sense, a place of artistic reflection. For more comments on the formation of private home in relation to the choices of practical or theoretical life in ancient Athens, cf. Elena Walter-Karydi, The Greek House. The refinement of the house in the post -classical years. Athens: In Athens Archaeological Society, 1996.
4 Eleni Walter-Karydis, The Greek House. The refinement of the house in the background years, p. 88.
5 Hartmut Rosa, acceleration and alienation: For a critical theory of timeliness in late modernity, by M. Koulouthros, edited by G. Ktenas, ed.
6 Eva Illouz "Cold Tenderness, The Rise of Emotional Capitalism" Maria Stasinopoulou, edited by Yiannis Vogiatzis, ed. Oposito, 2017.
