Peter Schmidt Archives - Public Seminar

Psyche

Read a Book, Knit a Sweater, Feel Good

Attensity! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement exalts spending time offline, but is its dogma persuasive?

June 17, 2026 • by Rachel Potter

Amateurs, crafters, operators, gatherers, counter-coders, monkey-wrenchers, gamers and players, parents, epimeletes, bards and reciters, spectators and fandoms, and puzzlers: These are the 11 categories that the Friends of Attention collective use to describe the types of people reclaiming powers of concentration offline. All perform what the Friends call “attention activism,” ...

That’s exactly the question

February 13, 2025 • by Peter Schmidt

At the turn of last year, The Economist published an alarming statistic: In 2024, half of Harvard College’s graduating seniors left campus for jobs in finance, consulting, and technology. For anyone who believes in the values of a liberal arts education, this is cause for concern. If we accept in good ...