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>

Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> writes:

> 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

Beautiful quote from 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>

*Very* interesting.

Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> wrote or quoted:
>Slow Computing

First, there was "fast food" (a term coined in the 1950s).
In 1986, Carlo Petrini in Rome coined "slow food" as a counterterm.

What's vying for our attention, broadly speaking, is advertising.
And we encounter it just as much in printed magazines as on
computer screens. For me, it's not necessarily a question of speed.
In fact, I see more opportunities to filter out ads on the computer.

I've develop a custom program that curates the news reports
I consume by filtering out content deemed trivial, such as
gossip and frivolous matters.

Through the use of keywords, my program eliminates articles
containing specific phrases or terms associated with such
trivialities, much like it would filter out advertisements.

For instance, if a news item's description includes the string
"Prince Harry", that particular story would be automatically
omitted from my view, courtesy of this program.

This Python program demonstrates the fundamental process.

fn = '''output-file-20240531003240-tmpdml.html'''
output = open( fn, "w", errors='ignore' )
uri = fr'''http://example.com/article_list.html'''
request = urllib.request.Request( uri )
resource = urllib.request.urlopen( request )
cs = resource.headers.get_content_charset()
content = resource.read().decode( cs, errors="ignore" )
# assuming each article link is in an element of type "p"
for p in re.finditer( r'''<p[^\001]*?</p>''', content, flags=re.DOTALL ):
if "Prince Harry" not in p.group( 0 ):
print( p.group( 0 ), file=output )
output.close()
subprocess.Popen( fn, shell=True ) # opens the output file in a browser!

But yes, writing all these Python programs does slow me down . . .

Julieta Shem <jshem@yaxenu.org> wrote at 22:35 this Thursday (GMT):
> Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> writes:
>
>> 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
>
> Beautiful quote from 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>
>
> *Very* interesting.

Agreed, it was quite a neat read.
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom