But never mind that. This is not the Psychology Blog, although changing your Facebook relationship status (or other statuses) nowadays seems a crucial moment in life that must to be carefully timed.

Many of us cannot imagine living anymore without the dynamics of the social web, which is powered by the Internet and mobile devices. Still, we yet seem in full search for the optimal balance between social and technology. Mobile apps like TheFinds’ Glimpse could just as much – or even better – guide consumers selecting products based on the social network. And there are already plenty of apps (like Layar) that provide consumers with an Augmented Reality – which could easily include Facebook likes - through their mobile devices.

The question is however whether the latest mobile app really will help us to become more social, as shopping with a friend may become much less fun if she is continuously pointing her smartphone to items, finding out what Facebook thinks. Also, there is a good chance she will be less focused on the actual items for sale, occupied as she will be by handling the device and interpreting the information that pops up.

Of course, we are not even considering shopping anymore in Virtual Reality (anybody in SecondLife against this, any of the four?).  But Augmented Reality just might look a little bit different from what we currently think as well. More real, if you like.

The late Mark Weiser of Xerox PARC would be more relevant than ever with his vision of Real Virtuality: we should not be entering or caught up in the virtual world. Instead the virtual world should enter ours, not screaming for attention but as true calm technology: “that which informs but doesn’t demand our focus or attention”. Our next mobile device may just as well turn out to be a digital hanger, a pico projector, smart paper, glasses (the parodies are by now funnier than the original) or just an occasional, soft Internet Whisper in our ears.

Nothing more than appropriate that I participated in a new workshop concept the other day that was also coined Real Virtuality. Invented by our always creative colleagues of the Accelerated Solution Environment (ASE) it featured real Like, Follow and Retweet stickers that the participants could use during the furthermore tech-light session for – well – social purposes. There were even Dislike stickers (eat your heart out, Facebook!).

Unfortunately I cannot explain in detail to you how the Paper iPad worked, as we do occasionally tend to enjoy the fruit of our Intellectual Property just a little bit longer. It was anyway a great day with great clients at our chateau Les Fontaines, in the middle of the woods.

Guess Mark Weiser would have liked the place as well, given the final paragraph of his landmark paper about ubiquitous computing and calm technology: “There is more information available at our fingertips during a walk in the woods than in any computer system, yet people find a walk among trees relaxing and computers frustrating. Machines that fit the human environment instead of forcing humans to enter theirs will make using a computer as refreshing as taking a walk in the woods”.

Technology that calms us. I could live with that.

The big insight came when we decided to shut the navigator off for the remainder of the journey. A trivial decision that soon felt like being liberated.

The friendly owner of our last stop towards home – a charming hotel near the Vosges mountains – explained a route through the woods to us that turned out to be much nicer than the system would have ever come up with. Combined with a short, but careful study of the main milestones en route we were equipped with all we needed to get back home. While on the road – with no display to monopolize our attention with a flow of directions, distances and maps – we were clearly more aware of our surroundings (the lovely Lorraine countryside for example) then before. The journey thus felt more relaxed, more like a true experience and all in all more gratifying.

Let’s face it: more than ever, we rely so much on the availability of information and technology that we slowly but surely forget what the essence is of the activity we are trying to support. Data and tools become the new objective, the altar, the addiction. Sometimes with disastrous results, as illustrated by a ‘new breed of flight accidents’ that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) contributes to abdicating responsibility to automated systems – such as the autopilot - resulting in weaker flying skills.

It happens within enterprises as well.

We all know the false illusion of control the spread sheet has been providing to managers, biding time behind their desk rather than managing their business and people on the work floor and outside. We may have the coolest Customer Relationship Management (’CRM’) tool imaginable (let’s say a cloud-enabled Salesforce.com app with social extensions running on an iPhone 5 that popped up in a bar) but it may not help us a bit building a better, warmer relationship with our clients, especially if we prefer frequent, face-to-face contact with a smartphone above the client.

Nicholas Carr shows in his book The Shallows a blood-chilling image of the way “connectedness” changes our very brains. Abundant real-time data and tools encourage the rapid, distracted sampling of small chunks of information from many different sources. As a result, we become much faster and handier in getting exactly the support we need. It’s even addictive, as our brains become hungry for these delicious short, frequent bursts of information and events. What we are losing in the process is our ability to concentrate, contemplate, and reflect. Eventually, the essence of what we are doing thus becomes a vague and distant memory, something you have tagged and then archived in the cloud for later, unlikely to show up again.

What can we do about it? Certainly, real-time information and devices will not go away. There will be more. But we can be mindful about the way and moments in time we apply them. We can reaffirm their role as supporting and enabling tools, rather than as our main source of energy and the meaning of life. We can train ourselves to observe dense flows of information, rather than process it all (apply this to Twitter, for a start). We can even use technology to deal with technology, in order to filter out what we really don’t need or want to absorb: in the end, the best technology is invisible.

If all else fails, there is still – at least metaphorically speaking – a crucial, highly effective component of any computing device. It’s called a plug. Try pull it out every now and then. You’ll love it.

I’m in the process of setting up a small business with a workshop from my home in the forest, surrounded by the sounds of nature as well as the stillness of it. I fill my workroom with things that inspire visually or through tactility. Much of my work is done by hand, listening to music, the radio or just the sound of the wind rustling through the trees.

On the surface it’s the perfect platform for Slow. There is really no excuse not to relish in the slowness of things as everything around seem to confirm that man is a slave to the illusion of time.

However, I realize with this that the stillness and slowness is often about me as opposed to within. Inside I can find myself whisked away on a whirlwind of thoughts rushing me onwards and upwards, reminding me what I should do, could do or ought to have done.  I run through conversations in my head, prepare mentally for some event or get lost in letting my imagination revisit past events and play them out with alternate endings. Amusing myself by the varying outcomes (this lady needs to get herself out of the forest more often you say ;), but I know both through observation and reading that I am not alone in this mental hyperactivity.

Without my full awareness I’m kidnapped from the ever important present; the point where life and slowness dwells. I will live fully in my mind until I’ll all of a sudden become aware of how day has shifted to dusk. How the cat has left her good spot under the cutting table and how I’ve finished hemming a skirt without having been present in the slightest.

So wrapped up in my seductive thinking and unaware of my surroundings can I get that I’ve been walking past this perfect little “accident” atop of my bookshelf for weeks. A little visual gem waiting to be discovered;  The havoc caused by my stainless steel dragonfly on an open book page where I so randomly placed it. Even in my bubble of seeming tranquility I failed, for weeks, to see the composition it made. It became to me a reminder and metaphor of the consequences I face by neglecting either my internal or my external need for slow. The fading and decomposing of life until the day I find myself in my own storage room of dusty memories and realize that life was a blink and I wasn’t really there.

It may seem trivial but it delighted me, urged me to open my eyes, listen and feel. It brought me into the moment and gave me a small rusty key to unlocking the present.  I still forget I have the key. I still get lost in a maze of thoughts, but then I glance atop the bookshelf to the steely object that dwells there, reach into my pocket, pull out the key and to unlock the slowness and stillness that dwells there.

We cherish our mind and rely on our intellect and there is a time and a place for this, but a wise man once said to me when I was torn between mind and heart: “Who says that our minds knows best?” I’m inclined to agree with him and who knows, perhaps with time and patience I may upgrade my rusty key for a silver one…

My initial assignment was to write about what it is like to set up a small business from my home in the forests of southern Norway in this ever accelerating world, but alas, something far more fascinating has caught my attention; Slow television of Slow Travel.

As I am writing this Norway’s leading national network is nearing the end of the world’s longest and slowest broadcast ever. Minute by minute they have dedicated a whole channel to the live broadcast of Hurtigruten’s voyage from Bergen on the south-west coast of Norway to Kirkenes in the far north close to the Russian border. This is a journey that takes an incredible 134 hours and has been dubbed the most scenic sea voyage around, and at this time of year it takes its 691 passengers into the land of the midnight sun at a speed of only 15 knots (17.3 mph or 27.8 kilometres per hour), so Hurtigruten (directly translated to “The Fast Route”) has long been outdone in the definition-stakes of fast transportation.

In a world where we like our entertainment to be fast paced and action-packed this would seem, on paper, to be a recipe for disaster, but it is turning out to be one of the network’s greatest successes in recent times. Population-wise Norway is a small country with only 4.92 million inhabitants. So far 1 345 000 of these inhabitants (including myself of course) has tuned in to follow this voyage. As the ferry passes towns and villages on their route they are greeted by people everywhere dressed in their finest, or in very little at all depending on character, waving flags, brass bands playing and people singing. It’s like a 17th of May (our Constitution Day) celebration in every harbour and people seem to unite over this very unusual event with a high sense of national pride and a genuine joy in watching this journey unfold so slowly before them and before us who view from afar.

It’s not only via our television screens we tune in. There is a live web-broadcast too with Denmark, USA, Germany, The Netherlands and Great Britain amongst its keenest viewers. There are frequent updates on Twitter and the Facebook page dedicated to the voyage has nearly 60 000 followers, so in some sense the fast-paced technology of getting updates on where and when at any given time seem to motivate viewers somewhat to tune in, or if not able to, at least not miss out on anything - a unison between fast and slow.

I’m no expert in either Slow or what this unusual event means, but from my little perch people seem very responsive to this piece of Slow-television. As this unusual journey by television is gathering momentum, it is in every sense a fantastic advertisement for the concept of Slow-travel. “Slow” seems to be a buzz-word again here in Norway and that makes my little tortoise heart leap with joy.

For those of you than want to have a little look-see at what this is all about you can visit the following link: http://www.nrk.no/hurtigruten/?lang=e

At the magazine, most of us feel we are publishing a title that is on the edge of something big. We seem to know it. But the big question is, will our advertisers ever ‘get it’?

Je viens d’arriver à Paris pour lancer la Foire de Paris 2011. Un veritable éloge de la lenteur…

Just hit Paris. Will be launching the Paris Fair 2011 tomorrow. A real festival of Slow…

Is this the beginning of the end of the age of speed? Turns out mankind really is slowing down. In some ways….

Starting today, a Spanish couple will spend 40 days in bed (à la John Lennon- Yoko Ono) to promote the Slow Movement. Intriguing social experiment. For instance, can you have a truly Slow bed-in if you’re online the whole time?

I’ll be speaking via Skype with the couple today at 17h (Spanish time).

Una pareja española va a pasar 40 días en la cama (onda John Lennon-Yoko Ono) para promover el Movimiento Slow.

Hablaré con ellos por Skype hoy a las 17h (hora española)