Picnic ’08: Time for Slow Communication

This is an article of mine that was published in Picnic Printed for the Picnic conference.

Most of us don’t really like fast food, but sometimes we just can’t help it. We’re hungry, in a hurry and we don’t really care about the quality of our food – we just want our stomachs filled, and we feel slightly guilty (and nauseous) afterwards. Still, most people do care about nutrition and appreciate the value of enjoying a well-prepared meal in the pleasant company of friends or relatives. If food can be about quality, intimacy, tradition and community instead of speed, efficiency, solitude and modernity – could communications technology be that, too? Could we invent ‘slow communication’, just like we’ve come to embrace the concept of ‘slow food’?

Sure we can – if Stefan Agamanoli has any say in it, anyway. And he has: he’s the Chief Executive and Research director of Scotland-based Distance Lab, a research facility which specializes in ‘slow’ forms of communication. His keynote at Picnic ’08 was entitled Dueling with distance, “because we’re usually fighting the disadvantages of bridging distances, instead of simply dealing with them”. Take the mobile phone, for instance: the same design philosophy that created fast food has created the mobile phone, Agamanoli says.

Within mere minutes, the Picnic audience is presented with a range of innovative concepts that Agamanoli and his colleagues cooked up. They’ve tried to recreate some aspects of using a traditional (red, British) phone booth, which typically is a solitary experience without distractions. He shows a video of two people having a telephone conversation, while floating in a swimming pool with an iron helmet on, effectively eliminatiing every sensory distraction – resulting in quite thoughtfull conversations, while the participants lost track of time.

Communications technology sometimes seems to “strip us of our humanity”, Agamanoli continues, “but it doesn’t have to”. He backs up this claim by showing another project, intended for private bedroom communication between partners – with the catch that they’re not in the same bedroom. Both participants are wearing a special ring, which is detected by a camera on the ceiling, which in turn transmits a light beam on the bed of the person on the other end of the line. Effectively, they’re drawing white-colored light signs on each other’s beds and bodies. As a nice touch, the color switches to pink when the respective gestures are synchronized.

Ultimately, Agamanoli concludes, we’re able to create communication systems that aren’t generic, but tailored to our relationships. “Technology doesn’t have to be hard-edge. It can be healthy, slow, soft, and able to reflect our humanity and our traditions.” I’ll drink to that.

Stem of voeg toe aan :