Boredom, for example, has become a collateral victim. It hasn’t disappeared — we’ve simply made it illegitimate. We erase it, fill it, scroll it away. At the slightest pause, we reach for our phones. It’s become a reflex. Boredom is seen as an error to correct, a glitch in the system.

And yet, it’s anything but useless. In philosophy, Heidegger saw ... See more