Slow IT is not only about a renewed, careful approach to creating technology solutions. It is also about our own, personal challenges in using technology, in dealing with the distractions and temptations of ubiquitous information. Thanks to the Internet, Blackberries and Smart Phones, we are always online, always in touch with the high pulse of the connected world.

And it is addictive too. If you happen to have teenagers in the house, you know what it means to be discomgoogolated. If I would ask my 18 year old daughter to choose between MSN and oxygen, no doubt she would go for MSN. Just to be one the safe side, after all, breathing in and breathing out is more like a theoretical concept, isn’t it?

When practicing ZEN meditation, many people find it very difficult to spend an hour thinking about nothing. But practice – sooner or later – pays off and an empty, slowed-down mind is a prerequisite to become enlightened.  In the same way, we will need a lot of tough training exercise before we can disconnect ourselves from the madness on the web, anytime, anywhere we want it. But there is no alternative, except when we think that being permanently discomgoogolated is something that cannot be avoided. A bit like breathing in and breathing out (although my daughter would diagree).