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slow theory Uncategorized

Everything is in flux – constants in a liquid society

[original german version] With each heavy storm of rain Change comes o’er thy valley fair; Once, alas! But not again Can the same stream hold thee e’er. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Constancy in Change)[1] In physics – after all that is the science where, in contrast to the humanities, everything has a set place – […]

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economy philosophy slow theory

Slow Startups

Remember that time is money. Benjamin Franklin If there are two concepts that seem on exact oposites of each other, it’s “Slow” and “Startup”. On the one hand an emphasis on quality, good living, carefully crafted products, and relaxation, on the other hand a focus on growth, traction, and speed. But as we will argue […]

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everyday life slow theory

Slow – the open alternative to platform capitalism

Uber is the new Google (which was already the new Microsoft, that was maybe the new United Fruits, or the new Standard Oil). And while we hear that “Software is eating the world”, we learn with how little control we are left with. Like shopping malls the walled gardens of the Facebook’s and Google’s Internet […]

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computer science slow theory

Collapsing Moments. Failure-driven Debugging of Intuition

by Regine Heidorn, Bit-Boutique®. [Original German Post] In our consciousness of the everyday grind we are mostly aware of thoughts, feelings and actions for a moment or a longer timespan like days or weeks. We try to do the Right Thing™ at the Right Time™ to keep us in a flow to reach our goals. […]

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slow theory

Public relations after the memetic turn

I don’t like the term PR 2.0. It suggests an improved version of something that has been around a long time. Some bugs have been removed, some new features have been added. But all in all, it’s still public relations as we know it. I think this is not the case. Why? Because we went […]

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economy history philosophy slow theory

Memetic Turn

[Original German Blog Post] > “The Hanged” from the Tarot Deck of Charles VI., Paris, early 15th century. The symbolism of Tarot – similar to that of alchemy – forms a pre-modern memetic system. Tightly knit into other more or less esoteric programs of meaning, like Qabbalah or astrology, its images are at first illustrative […]

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art slow theory

The Idiot – a topical figure again?

ἰδιώτης,idiōtēs I) N. 1) the individual man, private citizen in oposite to the state, att.Pr.; b) the common, ignoble man 2) a) the ignorant, layman in oposite to the trained person, e.g. in oposite to a physician b) someone ignorant to poetry, a prosaic person. […] Totski muttered to himself: “He may be an idiot, […]

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art literature philosophy slow theory video

“Modernism is our Classical Antiquity”

[Original German Blog Post] (1) “A Vernacular is like a crumbled street version of a classic language. Like Italian is a vernacular language and Latin is a classic language. What does actual vernacular online video sound like, that’s native to the Internet and speaks vernacular Internet ease? I’ll just read you the categories of an […]

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art economy history literature philosophy slow theory

“So literature collapses before our eyes” –
Non-Commodity Production

Enhancesprivate authorship, the competitive goal-oriented individual Retrievestribal elitism, charmed circle, cf. the “neck verse” Medium:Print ReversesWith flip from manuscript into mass production via print comes the corporate reading public and the historical sense Obsolescesslang, dialects and group identity, separates composition and performance, divorces eye and ear McLuhan’s tetrad-model: four aspects of the effect of media […]

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history slow theory

The Army of Technological Slaves

[Original German Blog Post] “καρπὸν δ᾽ ἔφερε ζείδωρος ἄρουρα αὐτομάτη πολλόν τε καὶ ἄφθονον” Hesiod, Έργα και ημέραι “Machines exist to serve us. There is something to be learned for media makers from the culture of the Hacker: not to surrender to the machines, neither reject them, but to take advantage of the machines, to […]