Things have been quiet on Slow Planet lately. But don't worry: the Slow revolution is still gaining momentum all over the world. We're just preparing a radical redesign for the site behind the scenes. There will be lots more columnists and bloggers and space for the citizens of Slow Planet to air their views and come together. The new site should go live in middle to late September.

In the meantime, here is a link to a piece I wrote in the Guardian recently on the bright side of the current economic slowdown:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/24/ethicalliving.creditcrunch

See you very soon on the new, improved Slow Planet!

All around the world artists are grappling with our addiction to speed - hardly surprising given the intimate link between slowness and the act of creation. I know of at least one Slow Art Manifesto. And every week seems to bring the launch of another exhibition exploring the tension between fast and slow. A few days ago it was the turn of No Time To Lose in Aberdeen, Scotland. But today I want to draw your attention to a charmingly eccentric "slow art" project at Bournemouth University in the UK. It's called Real Snail Mail and its aim is to make us rethink our impatient relationship with time and technology. It works like this: Three genuine snails have been placed in a tank and fitted with receiving devices that let them send emails on behalf of visitors to a website. When a snail slithers past one of the transmitting nodes in the tank, it collects a waiting message from the site. It then slithers away at a very unhurried 0.03mph (0.05km/h) . When the snail passes within range of another node, the email is dispatched to the recipient. The whole process can take hours, days, weeks, or even longer. One snail, Austin, has emerged as the fastest delivery boy of the three: he has sent 10 messages with an average delivery time of 1.96 days. But his pal, Muriel, has so far failed to dispatch a single email. Anyway, I'm wondering if I can file my tax return this way...

Just back from a conference in Newcastle, England called Thinking Digital. It was a glimpse into the extraordinary ways that technology is going to reshape the future, revolutionizing every aspect of the way we work, play and live. It may even alter what it means to be human, as artificial intelligence catches up with the real thing and more and more gadgets - think medical nanobots patrolling the bloodstream or computer chips boosting the brain - are installed in our bodies. The most vivid picture of this sci-fi future was painted by Ray Kurzweil, the futurist and inventor, who appeared on stage as a ghostly apparition inside a slab of glass. He was thousands of miles away in California yet we could see and hear each other as if we were all in the same room. I found the crystal ball-gazing in Newcastle exhilarating, but also a bit troubling. It seems to me that as the rate of technological change accelerates, we urgently need to slow down and answer some crucial question, starting with: Do we really want everything that technology can deliver and will all the advances be benign? Even as a technophile, I have some doubts. What happens to memory, patience and the journey of discovery when all human knowledge is instantly accessible from anywhere? What happens to human relations when you can download the full profile of anyone you meet and read it on a Terminator-like screen on your contact lens before speaking to them? And who gets to write that profile? Above all, what happens when we are constantly connected to the Internet and no longer have any time or space for silent, solitary reflection?

One reason for the global obesity epidemic is that our bodies were designed for a hunter-gathering society and are therefore highly efficient at storing excess calories as fat. Today, when calories are permanently on tap and there is less call for burning them off hunting and gathering, our waist-lines are ballooning. As I sat there in Newcastle, with my own waist expanded from the buffet lunch, it occurred to me that maybe the same analogy works for the high-tech revolution. We are hard-wired to be curious and to want to connect and communicate with others - and those are wonderful instincts. The trouble is that in a world of limitless information and constant access to other people, we don't know when to stop. Just as we keep on eating even after our bodies have had enough food, we keep on texting, surfing and wilfing long after our minds have reached a frenzy of stimulation and distraction. The truth is that no matter how fast the technology becomes, the human brain is always going to need slowness. To rest and recharge. To think deeply and creatively - every artist, designer and inventor knows that deceleration is essential for the act of creation. We also need to slow down in order to look into ourselves and grapple with the big questions: Who am I? How do I fit into the world? What is life really for? Nor is this a concern voiced only by monks and meditation gurus. Even the most gung ho geeks are starting to warn that being "always on" may not be the best thing for the human brain. Dipchand Nishar, the man in charge of wireless technology at Google, has said: "We had Generation X and Generation Y. Now we have Generation ADD." And other high tech companies, including Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft, are coming to similar conclusions.

Yet this is not a call for a Luddite backlash. Technology is not evil; on the contrary, it has mind-blowing potential to make the world a better place. But as we enter the era of what Kurzweil calls "exponential growth in technological advances," the need for circumspection is greater than ever before. That means thinking hard about how best to apply each new technology rather than just automatically adopting it. Or put another way: As the pace of change quickens, we need to remember that some things never change, starting with the fact that we are human beings. And human beings will always need to unplug and slow down.

One big argument for slowing down and working less is that more money doesn't always make us happier. The roots of this thinking lie in a 1974 study by Richard Easterlin at the University of Southern California. He found that the happiness of a nation's inhabitants rises in tandem with growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) but only up to a certain point. Thereafter, getting richer stops making us any happier. This, of course, calls into question our obsession with maximizing economic growth. But over the last 30 years the boom in happiness studies has encouraged other academics to revisit the data. Apparently, two researchers at the University of Pennsylvania are about to publish a comprehensive survey of the literature which shows that happiness and per capita GDP continue to rise more or less in unison. In other words, making more money does make us happier. I haven't read the study yet, but already it raises some intriguing questions. What does it mean for the Slow revolution if working longer and earning more does in fact make us happier? How much does our happiness depend on the kind of work that we do? Do we need to build other criteria, such as health, education and the environment, into any measure of economic growth? How do we even define happiness? Lots to think about here....

There is nothing less Slow than a book tour. I'm now criss-crossing North America to promote my new book, Under Pressure, and my schedule is a punishing round of interviews, speeches and short-haul flights. The good news is that I only have to do this once every few years. And that I get a chance to catch up on my reading. Just started the hauntingly beautiful Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje. The other day I came across an intriguing column by Christopher Caldwell in the Financial Times that reminded me of some earlier comments on this blog about how capitalism fits into the Slow revolution. It seems that the go-getting US middle-classes, one of the main engines of the global economy, are having a change of heart. After years of working longer and longer hours to pay for bigger and bigger houses and cars and everything else, they are starting to ask whether all the toil and hurry and stress are worth the trouble. In a study released earlier this month by the Pew Research Center in Washington DC, middle-class Americans were asked to name their Number One priority in life. The top answer, given by 68 percent of respondents was: "having enough free time to do the things you want." Is this because Americans are warming to the Slow revolution? Or are they simply growing disillusioned with an economic system that seems less and less fair? Or both? Either way, some basic assumptions about the economic future are coming under review. For the first time in history, median family incomes adjusted for inflation actually fell during the last boom (1999-2006). And over 40% of middle-class Americans no longer believe that the "rich achieve their wealth through hard work and ambition." Maybe this is the moment to start hammering out a recipe for Slow capitalism....

I'm in Taiwan speaking at a conference called Between Fast and Slow. It is hosted by Dada, an institute that promotes art in public places, and is funded by the Taiwanese government. Taipei, the capital city, is a bustling beehive of a place but the Slow philosophy has really struck a chord here. There is a word in Mandarin, "kuai-huo, " that means "cheerful" or "thrilled." It is made up of two characters whose literal meaning is "fast living." When In Praise of Slow came out in Taiwan in 2005, my publisher here coined a new word for the title: "man-huo," which means "slow living." Since then, "man-huo" has entered the Taiwanese vernacular, with people using it as shorthand to describe a better way of doing pretty much everything.

At the conference, one theme that keeps popping up is whether Slow belongs more to the East or West. Are Westerners simply discovering and appropriating Eastern traditions? Certainly many of the manifestations of Slow - yoga, meditation, tai-chi, alternative medicine - hail from the Orient. But I'm not sure the East has a monopoly on Slow. I think the need to change gears is universal. Even in the West we have our Slow traditions - what is the Sabbath, after all, if not a call to put on the brakes? The Slow heritage has probably faded more in the West but that doesn't mean Westerners have nothing to offer. I prefer to think of the Slow Revolution as a coming together of East and West, with both sides learning from each other.

I've been away at a family wedding in Scotland, so the blog shifted into Slow gear for a bit there...Anyway, lots of food for thought in the comments to my last post. The consensus seems to be that formally plunging into conventional politics is not the right move for the Slow Movement at the moment. I agree. That image from Mikko of my sitting alone at the back of a parliament said it all. And who would have thought that Marx would hit the nail on the head in that rousing quote (thanks, Tom) about the need to avoid being dogmatic and doctrinaire? But the comments here raise a deeper question that we will all need to address the coming months and years: how will our economic system have to change to create a truly Slow world? Thomas fingers modern capitalism as the main cause of our hyper-accelerated culture. I agree that it is a key part of the equation but is it the root cause? I wonder if maybe the real driver of our fast-forward culture is our dysfunctional relationship with time itself. We are so neurotic about getting the most out of our time, both at work and at leisure, that we turn every moment of the day into a race against the clock. Maybe modern capitalism evolved in order to indulge and quench that desire. In other words, it is the product of our manic yearning to do more and more in less and less time. But then again consumer capitalism clearly stokes our desire to do it all and have it all. So maybe our current economic system is both the result and the cause of our speedaholic culture. Either way, this is a debate we should develop in the new Slow Work forum....

Tomas asks an important question. Should Slow Planet be "explicitly political?" For many of us, slowing down starts in a very personal way. I realized that I needed to put on the brakes when I felt myself tempted to buy a book of one-minute bedtime stories (yes, they really do exist: Snow White in 60 seconds) in order to speed up the evening ritual with my son. But if you follow the Slow philosophy to its logical conclusion, then the personal is not enough. Building a Slow world implies rethinking our collective approach to everything ? how we run our schools and companies; how we travel, practice medicine, raise children and build cities; how we make our food and care for the environment; how we manufacture and transport products. No man is an island and so the best way to slow down is to slow down together. And that means the Slow revolution must have a political dimension.

But what form should that take? Has the time come to launch an official Slow political party? My feeling is No ? or at least not yet. The Slow philosophy transcends the old Left/Right divide because it makes sense right across the political spectrum, but jumping too soon into conventional politics could polarize the debate and scare off people who would otherwise come together under the Slow flag. A Slow Party could also be dismissed as one-dimensional ? a problem faced everywhere by the Green Party. What's more, there is still a long way to go in the debate over how to translate the Slow creed into hard policy. Maybe the best way forward for now is to persuade existing political parties to embrace Slow ideas. Actually, that is already happening. One example: Britain's Conservative Party (that's right, the party of Margaret Thatcher) made admiring use of the Slow philosophy in its recent Quality of Life report. What do you think? Are there "explicitly political" steps that Slow Planet should be taking right now?

First of all a big thank you to all the citizens of Slow Planet, and especially to those who took the time to write comments. There's plenty more work to do, but I think we're off to a solid start. It's exciting to see emails pouring in from all over the world. We've already heard from Slow initiatives that weren't even on our radar before. For instance, I love the sound of these Slow Thinking events in New Zealand. I'm also delighted to see that a dialogue is starting in the forum. Conversations and debate will be the driving force behind Slow Planet. We even have our very first criticism: Thomas Bergbusch has told us why we should not use a photograph of golf as an image in the Slow Sports section. I can see his point, and as a Canadian I like the idea of a picture of little boys chasing a hockey puck around on a frozen pond, but I'd love to hear what the rest of you think.

There is much more to come. We are setting up forums in each of the different sections: Work, Design, Travel, Sports. We are also lining up leading Slow thinkers to blog or write regular columns throughout the site. If you want to propose someone, let us know. We will also be rearranging the site so that Links, Media Sightings, Forums and other features are easier to reach. Another idea is to have a Slow Calendar that lists Slow-inspired events around the world. We will soon launch new sections, too, such as Slow Music, Parenting, Medicine and Food. No doubt, some of you are wondering why Food was not in the first wave, given the importance of the Slow Food movement. The answer is that we are big supporters of Slow Food and want them to be a part of Slow Planet. We are waiting to hear their views on the site and how they would like to work with us. Watch this space.

Lastly, a final thought on my Fast versus Slow blogging post. I reckon I'll lean more to the Slow end of the spectrum here on Slow Planet. Instead of frantically blogging several times a day, I'll post when I have something to say - and after I've had time to think it through.