It is not really my habit to link to videos on YouTube. But this tirade of stand-up comedian Louis C.K. at Conan o’Briens tonight show neatly touches on an important aspect of the case for Slow Technology and Slow IT. It may not be in ZEN style, but Louis clearly encourages us to practice more mindfulness in the face of advanced technology.

We are so spoiled by the speed and availability of technology that we genuinely feel depressed or even mistreated if we temporarily have to do without. And also, we don’t even realise anymore how advanced technology actually is and what miracles are done with it.

It takes your mobile, ultra light-weight phone more than 3 seconds to connect? Well, its reaching out to the other side of the planet. Wirelessly.

Will your plane arrive 20 minutes late? For heaven’s sake: you’re sitting in a chair. In the sky!

No point in adding yet another platitude to the ocean of comments on Google’s announcement of Chrome OS. Guess we saw it coming. And it was hardly rocket science, I might add.

It is however worrying that Google envisions an operating system that will fire up a laptop in just a few seconds. I mean, after all these years of getting used to operating systems that take more and more time to start up, I sort of got fond of the idea of being delayed. Admitted, it’s the IT version of the Stockholm Syndrome, but I actually cherished these precious moments of being forced to do nothing. Whether Windows, OS X, or Ubuntu: while loading their endless series of kernel software modules and drivers, they all brought me valuable opportunities to meditate or to contemplate the day to come. I would watch that hourglass for many minutes and time after time it would remind me of the relativity of technology and the craziness of rush and speed. Or I would just thoroughly enjoy a strong espresso. Or I would do nothing. All justified by our commonly shared acceptance of operating systems that are so complex that they take forever to come to live.

Now Google breaks this equilibrium with Crome OS, with the promise that booting it will be a matter of seconds. It will set a trend and we should hate them for it. Or at least, we should think twice before clicking on one of these placed ads. That will teach them.

Goodbye Quality Time. I will miss you dearly.

14-7-2009 update: more discussion on ZDnet

The other day I spoke at a conference for the leading bloggers in Norway.

It was a little unnerving. Bloggers are a pretty fast bunch, so singing the praises of Slow to them felt like barbecuing a steak at a vegan retreat.

From the stage, I could see laptop screens glowing in the dark. An iPhone rang. Members of the audience tweeted my talk, their dispatches scrolling down a large screen behind me. In Norwegian.

Even so, the Slow message seemed to go down well. I was not booed, heckled or pelted with tomatoes. Okay, someone tweeted that I reminded him of Quentin Tarantino. But given the high geek content in the room, I’m going to take that as a compliment.

The surest sign that the Slow philosophy made sense to those Norwegian bloggers is that several of them will soon be blogging on Slow Planet.

But the conference left a mark on me, too. I lost my Twitter virginity there. I decided that the only way to balance all the tweets about me was to start tweeting back.

So what do I make of Twitter? It’s a question put to me a lot by journalists these days. My view is that, like all technology, Twitter is neither good nor bad. What matters is how we use it.

Twitter can be a fun, enriching and provocative way to air views and connect with people. It can even reshape the political landscape, as we’ve seen during the protests in Iran. Sometimes a heat-of-the-moment 140-character missive is just the ticket.

But I think Twitter is best enjoyed as part of a balanced diet. In other words, it should complement – rather than replace – other forms of communication.

The trouble is that it can be very tempting to do everything at the speed of a tweet. And I mean everything.

Two university students are now reducing some of the greatest works of English literature, such as James Joyce’s Ulysses, to 140-character tweets.

This strikes me as an amusing parlour game that might inspire some people to read the original books in their entirety. It might even add to our understanding of the English canon.

But it also plays into the cultural pressure to reduce all communication to high-speed sound bytes.

Already, research shows that millions of people are no longer bothering to update their blogs. Why? Because blogging is now too slow. It’s much easier (and quicker) to type a short update on Facebook or to fire of a tweet.

If the Slow revolution stands for anything, it stands for doing everything at the right speed. And that principle holds true for communication. There are times for a shoot-from-the-hip tweet, but there are also times for more reflective – or slower – forms of communication.

I’ll tweet from time to time when it feels right. But I’ll also continue writing blogs, emails, articles and even books.

If you want to follow my tweets, my username is carlhonore.