Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

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Maybe you won't have time to read this entire post.

Once you christen something as a "movement," somehow it's more legitimate. It instantly becomes something that can be debated, passed along, and adopted. For me in the case of Slow Media, this was a particularly exciting addition to an already crowded Slow movement.

Most sources point to the Slow movement starting with a protest against the opening of a McDonald's restaurant in Rome in 1986, and the founding of the Slow Food organization as a result. Soon added to the club were Design, Cities, Schools, Money, Travel, and the list goes on. So when looking at all things Slow, it starts to feel like the idea is quite simply "Slow World." While the educational value and cultural shifts are already apparent, the larger the Slow concept becomes, the less it feels like an activated movement for change.

That's why I like Slow Media. The naming of these ideas consolidates a wide swath of technological, cultural, philosophical and spiritual debates into a more digestible concept that is expressly personal to a large amount of people living in the first world, and more importantly it speaks directly to the creators and purveyors of the content and channels we experience every day.

The stated goal of the Slow movement in general is "to address the issue of 'time poverty' through making connections," which for Slow Media is a perfect fit.

Slow media is largely about technology, encompassing arguments that have mostly been classified as nostalgic, such as vinyl vs. digital audio. But it's not just about mediums; it's about response time in communication, such as writing letters on paper vs. email. The speed of access to information changes the standard for knowledge, and leads to a culture that feels an obligation to expertise. We are teaching people to be shy about asking verbal questions in the age of Google. The traditional academic culture finds itself questioning its relevance. Expectations change, the basest kinds of cognition change. Social skills and the oldest of social contracts change, everything changes. Sigh.

So what's the problem? Just "roll with it," right? Most of this could be cast as a much-needed overhaul of the way we think and interact. The positive impacts of technology can be weighed against the negative, but the idea of Slow Media isn't really a global condemnation of technology, as much as it is a long overdue exploration of the human consequences. And in an era where the response seems to be that nothing can be done to change the way we communicate and ingest media, you'd assume the technology is predestined to accelerate the culture, with results that are out of our control. Transhumanists please forgive me, but there's another way.

So many of the specific human consequences of Fast Media are fairly well known, with much being written and researched in the context of social skills, mental health, global culture. And it's an ongoing debate that reaches all aspect of politics and culture from genetic ethics to prison reform. What isn't talked about as often are the "X factors" of human development, the unseen neural pathways and vestigial functions of human consciousness. The reason we don't talk about it is that much of it remains theoretical, and it's difficult to pin down a cause to an effect.

One interesting way to think about Slow Media is to ask the question "How much of what we've lost can be replaced?" how many of the systems we've developed over a 5 million year development cycle were working in concert with the world we experienced before technology? Is there a reason that some of us are finding it hard to live simple and full lives in the new framework, or is it simply a trait which leads to an inability to adapt, which some would argue sets us up to be selected out? We are not Luddites, we are not techno-terrorists. We simply want to be happy. Maybe we do need to be selected out (of the culture). But that doesn't mean we won't reproduce...

Forget big, intimidating problems of global responsibility and think of it as a personal health crisis. And then, if you will, think of how a health crisis can be monetized. Picture entire Slow communities, safe zones, sub-networks that practice the idea of Slow in general. Picture the brands that see experience through this lens. How can they use Slow Media to sell you a paradigm shift? Will your phone really always be the first thing you see in the morning, that last thing you see at night? It helps you remember, and it helps you forget? It's the thing you depend on most? Seriously? How true is this right now? More importantly, do you want it to be true?

*For an interesting take on this subject and the Western worldview, check out The Spell of the Sensuous, by David Abram.

Nick Sternberg