Slow Computing

Slow Computing
==============

... the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a
scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information
consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its
recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of
attention. - Herb Simon, 1971

Another aspect of contemporary screen-based culture is the constant
psychic conflict often referred to as the "Attention Economy". In just
trying to watch one youtube video, a typical user is confronted with
dozens of other appeals to focus somewhere else: comments, ratings,
related videos, advertisements, video responses, etc. Because
screen-based interaction is premised on temporal immediacy, we are, as
users forced into a state of hyper-attention where we must constantly
fight against the, largely commercial, attempts to make us look at
something else. When we remove the screen (and by necessity, simplify
the interface) we introduce a new form of temporality, where the speed
of interaction might more accurately reflect our ability to perceive
and understand information.

And by slowing down the interaction, without removing our access to
information, we return a bit of control to the user who is now free to
integrate these printed artifacts into her physical surroundings.
Instead of contorting our bodies and focusing exclusively on a square
of glass, we bring the digital into a tangible world where we are free
to move around, rearrange our desk and incorporate them in our embodied
social life. Instead of contorting our homes and offices with complex,
error-prone IT systems as proposed by the "Internet of Things" (IoT),
we create "things of the internet", dumb objects which become
sophisticated only in their content and context.

From: <http://screenl.es/slow.html>