The Slow Web
jackcheng.com
The Slow Web
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Re: The Slow Web
#2See also: http://theslowweb.com (used to be at .org but I forgot to do some renewals last year)
Re: The Slow Web
#3I love the term and I love the idea.
I consider the Slow Food movement to be one of the most important movements for true quality of life (at least as far as first-world problems go), and with the sort of always-on environment that typical white-collar workers experience in today's post-Twitter mobile world, I think tech can just as readily destroy people's lives as fast food does. This makes me sad because I've been instinctively drawn to tech for my entire life and I don't want to believe that we need to somehow forcibly detach from tech to lead balanced and sane lives. There is a way for tech to be enriching without stress or compulsion inducing. I'm totally behind The Slow Web and look forward to my own contributions in years to come.
Re: The Slow Web
#4For an example of a slow web social network, see Uncommon. I love it.
Re: The Slow Web
#5I love the term and I love the idea. I consider the Slow Food movement to be one of the most important movements for true quality of life (at least as far as first-world problems go), and with the sort of always-on environment that typical white-collar workers experience in today's post-Twitter mobile world, I think tech can just as readily destroy people's lives as fast food does. This makes me sad because I've been…
> I consider the Slow Food movement to be one of the most important movements for true quality of life
It's amusing that it has to be a "movement", because prior to a few decades ago everyone was part of the "slow food movement".
Re: The Slow Web
#6I remember coming across this article some months ago, and reading a little more into it. The language used in a lot of writing around this "movement" makes it sound like we're in a constant state of panic thanks to all our notifications. Nothing wrong with trying to get the point across, but it feels a little extreme to me.
The main takeaway (and it's a worthy one) is to respect your users and their time. Your app may be the most important thing in the world to you, but that doesn't mean that everyone using it wants to be instantly notified of every little event within it. Unless your app is responsible for mission-critical or time-sensitive stuff (messaging, etc), chances are your users don't need more than a weekly (or maybe daily) summary - and if they'd like to be notified via push, then make it an option that's off by default.
Re: The Slow Web
#7I love the term and I love the idea. I consider the Slow Food movement to be one of the most important movements for true quality of life (at least as far as first-world problems go), and with the sort of always-on environment that typical white-collar workers experience in today's post-Twitter mobile world, I think tech can just as readily destroy people's lives as fast food does. This makes me sad because I've been…
> I consider the Slow Food movement to be one of the most important movements for true quality of life It's amusing that it has to be a "movement", because prior to a few decades ago everyone was part of the "slow food movement".
I don't think it's amusing in the least. Have you looked around recently at people's diet and health? It's not just fast food, but convenience foods in general are huge business, and it's people largely bought into the marketing simply because they offer ever increasing taste and convenience. There are huge margins to be made by processing the same mono-culture grains into ever more refined and perfected addictive foodstuffs. Even government policy is shaped by this profit motive because who else is lobbying on farm policy?
Food policy an America is a perfect example of where capitalism fails to take into account externalities, in this case the externality is health and wellbeing which has always been recognized as of paramount importance, but nevertheless remains difficult to quantify in economic terms due to the inherent complexities involved. Unless we stop and think critically about it, we are doomed to sacrifice our health to a huge money-making apparatus in exchange for a bit of well-engineered flavor.
The status quo which most of of us have known for our entire lives is what necessitates a movement. Perhaps I'm taking your comment in the wrong spirit, but I think it's something that needs to be taken seriously by everyone living in industrialized countries.
Re: The Slow Web
#8In working on TBRSS, which is intended as a technical solution to the problem of the fast web, I have increasingly come to suspect that it is, in the social sense, much too late. There is an entire generation of people out there to whom twitchy connectivity is simply the norm, to whom the idea of not having a button to hit or a prompt to answer every few minutes is actually frightening.
Re: The Slow Web
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I consider the Slow Food movement to be one of the most important movements for true quality of life It's amusing that it has to be a "movement", because prior to a few decades ago everyone was part of the "slow food movement".
I don't think it's amusing in the least. Have you looked around recently at people's diet and health? It's not just fast food, but convenience foods in general are huge business, and it's people largely bought into the marketing simply because they offer ever increasing taste and convenience. There are huge margins to be made by processing the same mono-culture grains into ever more refined and perfected addictive fo…
Spoken truly like someone who has no idea what they are talking about.
At present industrial countries spend between 9-11% of their annual income on foodstuffs and less than 5% of their time gathering said foodstuffs - the lowest in time/money expenditure for food in the history of the world.[1]
If we die slightly earlier due to a possible rise in cardiovascular disease then it was a small price to pay for saving years in productive time.
Also, fast food firms are an easy target but when pressed for an answer, the team at Freakonomics made a pretty good case that a McDonalds hamburger is possibly the greatest foodstuff when balanced between cost, speed, safety and bountifulness of nutrients.[2]
The real problem with convenience food is not the nutritional content (which is perfectly adequate and superior to most diets across a historical timeline)is the unsustainable agricultural and water scarcity burden it places on the planet.
[1]http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/06/08/154568945/what-ame... [2]http://www.marketplace.org/topics/sustainability/freakonomic...
Re: The Slow Web
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it's amusing in the least. Have you looked around recently at people's diet and health? It's not just fast food, but convenience foods in general are huge business, and it's people largely bought into the marketing simply because they offer ever increasing taste and convenience. There are huge margins to be made by processing the same mono-culture grains into ever more refined and perfected addictive fo…
Spoken truly like someone who has no idea what they are talking about. At present industrial countries spend between 9-11% of their annual income on foodstuffs and less than 5% of their time gathering said foodstuffs - the lowest in time/money expenditure for food in the history of the world.[1] If we die slightly earlier due to a possible rise in cardiovascular disease then it was a small price to pay for saving yea…
There's more to food than nutrition. The process of growing, preparing, and eating food has been a major source of social connection and "quality time," which is in my opinion the most significant value of slow food for well-being. You can get the nutrition you need with a pittance today in terms of economics, but as a society I think we've failed to fill the social gap that was left open by our liberation from the work of eating well. I'm not saying that the gap has to be filled by food (there are probably even better things we could do), just that the slow food movement is using it that way. Filling it with productive work as you describe certainly has economic value, but I think the cost in terms of happiness for some of us kills the reward.