( CNN ) -- You can now get college credit for watching all those cat videos . The University of Pennsylvania is offering a class next semester titled `` Wasting time on the Internet , '' in which students will `` focus on the alchemical recuperation of aimless surfing into substantial works of literature . '' `` Students will be required to stare at the screen for three hours , only interacting through chat rooms , bots , social media and listservs , '' according to the course description on the school 's website . Sign us up ! Yahoo tech columnist Alyssa Bereznak notes that the course is taught at the Ivy League school by poet and professor Kenneth Goldsmith . The class is a required seminar for those of the English creative writing track and an elective for other English majors . `` In practice , the course will play out a little like this : Students will spend a lot of time chatting with friends , watching YouTube videos , surfing Facebook , exploring Reddit , and , who are we kidding , skimming UPenn-specific BuzzFeed lists , '' Bereznak writes . `` Eventually , however , they 'll have to take the detritus from that time wasted -- tweets , posts , photos , browser history , a painkiller prescription for their carpal tunnel -- and turn it into 'substantial works of literature . ' `` Goldsmith told Motherboard 's Jason Koebler that he wants his students to be distracted , dividing their time between multiple devices including phones , tablets and laptops . `` I 'm very tired of reading articles in the New York Times every week that make us feel bad about spending so much time on the Internet , about dividing our attention so many times , '' Goldsmith said . `` I think it 's complete bulls**t that the Internet is making us dumber . I think the Internet is making us smarter . There 's this new morality built around guilt and shame in the digital age . '' And shame on any student who tries to audit this class .
University of Pennsylvania is offering the class next semester . It 's being taught by poet/professor Kenneth Goldsmith . He says he thinks `` the Internet is making us smarter , '' not dumber .