
The Slow Web - mozboz
http://jackcheng.com/the-slow-web
======
dasil003
I 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.

~~~
GuiA
> 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".

~~~
dasil003
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.

~~~
ZenPro
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...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/06/08/154568945/what-america-
spends-on-groceries)
[2][http://www.marketplace.org/topics/sustainability/freakonomic...](http://www.marketplace.org/topics/sustainability/freakonomics-
radio/freakonomics-can-mcdouble-save-humanity)

~~~
aethertap
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.

~~~
weland
> 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.

Have you ever been involved in the process of growing food? A workday on the
farm is substantially longer than any office job, the only way to talk to
people is to scream because they're at least thirty meters away from you most
of the time. At the end of it you're drained and people who have been doing it
all their lives get to live the last years of their lives with terrible back
pains and having to rely on the young folks for, um, growing food, because it
turns out doing manual labour for twelve hours a day isn't so easy when you're
eighty. There's anything but quality time in that.

Edit: It also turns out that, with foodstuffs having to be so cheap, this kind
of work was also very badly paid, which meant that except for people who owned
huge amounts of land (and generally didn't work all, or more commonly _any_ of
it), people who had to do this were, if not dirt poor, in any case poor enough
not to be able to afford too much. It's the fact that we lost all this chance
to have "quality time" that allows us to heartily debate such matters through
silicon stuff that shoves charge carriers through really thin glass tubes.

~~~
aethertap
I own a farm, and work on it every day with my family, so yes, I do have
personal experience with it. It turns out that working together on something
you value seems to build relationships, at least in our case.

~~~
weland
How big a family and how big a farm? My grandparents used to have one, too. As
they grew old and the family either shrank or less of it became available for
regular fieldwork, it simply became unsustainable for them. They kept a small-
ish garden that provides them with most of the fruits and vegetables they eat
fresh, some livestock, and rented the rest of the land.

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notduncansmith
I 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.

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programmer_babu
Would anyone use an email service which delivers email and updates inbox at
one specific time of the day and doesn't allow any alternatives? My friends
found this idea ridiculous. But I'd love the peace of mind. I used to love
writing letters and waiting for days for a reply.

~~~
fiatjaf
That would be awesome, I think, for some types of people. Could be applied to
social networks as well.

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chewxy
See also: [http://theslowweb.com](http://theslowweb.com) (used to be at .org
but I forgot to do some renewals last year)

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gbog
Like the idea and the article, but was astonished by this:

> daily things that improve your life in small but beneficial ways, like
> flossing, meditating, or tracking your weight

Ok for meditating, maybe. But flossing? Tracking weight? I'd say obsession
with hygiene and fitness is very detrimental to one's quality of life. I'd
find hundreds more relevant ways to improve one's life in small steps: Eating
good unprocessed food, Having an aimless walk once a week, Gardening, Reading
books written more than 50 years ago, Listening to the music you like, etc.

I don't know what to do with this remark. Maybe our Amercanized civilisation
has an exagerated focus on body hygiene. Something that once saved lives
(doctors and nurses washing hands often) became an obsession the makes many
people miserable (brushing teeth trice a day, removing any form of pubic
pilosity, flossing, weight-watching).

~~~
ZoFreX
Obsession is unhealthy. Brushing your teeth twice a day is not. Some people
struggle to get the basic important things done without reminders!

Also: Tracking weight is far from "obsession". If you need to lose (or gain)
weight, tracking is one of the simplest and most effective things you can
start doing. You can't improve what you aren't measuring!

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lilsunnybee
Sorry but this article and "movement" are a bunch of bullshit. People have
always been in control of when they look at their computers or phones. If all
your apps are notifying you too much, fix it in the settings, or uninstall
them. Is this really a real problem people have in their lives?

If so just put away the phone and put some of that extra money towards making
others lives better; there are lots of people that need it, that don't have
the income or influence to solve those problems on their own. Have some
perspective in how you spend your money!

------
ruricolist
In 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.

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msutherl
I maintain a collection of links around this idea here:
[http://x.are.na/geHSysW](http://x.are.na/geHSysW)

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georgio
Another good one is [http://slowerinternet.com](http://slowerinternet.com)

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petercoolz
While I was reading about the daily emails, I couldn't help but think that the
slow web was just marketing speak for their chosen technical infrastructure.
Ie. they run a midnight CRON job that parses all the emails because that's
easy/cheap.

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GuiA
For an example of a slow web social network, see Uncommon. I love it.

[http://uncommon.cc](http://uncommon.cc)

~~~
rdrey
Looks like a very interesting social network.

BUT the presentation of the homepage felt too slow. Revealing a few words at a
time quickly lost its appeal.

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ThomPete
I call this the slow feed movement :)

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btbuildem
FWIW, my rule of thumb to determine if something is "fast food": If you paid
before you ate, it was fast food.

~~~
tendom
I dunno, the whole fast casual movement seems to be catching on here. And most
of the fast casual places are catering to people who want a fast meal but with
real, fresh, non-processed ingredients. My rule would put a lot more focus on
the existence of a drive through window and pre-processed ingredients.

~~~
ma2rten
I don't think those rules work. Many (nearly all ?) restaurants use some kind
of pre-processed ingredients. And many fast-food places don't have a drive
through window. In for instance Thailand the entire concept is even completely
unheard of.

My rule would be that it's large chain (or copy thereof), "system catering" (
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_catering](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_catering)
) and the aforementioned pay before you eat rule.

