Slow Culture
Description
"what is slow culture? The slow ethos is perhaps best summed up by the statement on the lone page at slowculture.org [2], next to a photo of tomatoes ripening on the vine,
"Soon there will be a web site here... But I’m taking my time. There will be links and info relating to slow culture. Now turn off your computer and spend some quality time with someone you love".
Why slow? The slow food movement began as a reaction against 'fast food' - the industrialisation of eating - when a group in Rome started by Carlo Petrini [3] protested against the opening of a McDonalds in 1986; the same year the Free Software Foundation first published the Free Software Definition [4]. In 1989 Petrini founded Slow Food International as a membership organisation, which now has branches across the world, advocating for local and regional cuisine; more careful cultivation and preparation of ingredients; less bulk, and more flavour and nutrition; and more conviviality and enjoyment in eating. In opposition to the perceived expectation in modern society for "bigger, better, faster, more" (to quote the 4 Non Blondes), slow culture is about increasing quality by reducing quantity, something any programmer understands. Just as free culture is a rough consensus, uniting a clutch of projects, organisations, and networks, whose commonality is defined by generalising the theory and practice of free software, a range of slow culture projects and networks have emerged, which extend the use of the word slow by the slow food movement. Slow money advocates for investment in stable, local economies, as an alternative to globalised, state-corporate ones . Slow Art means the "suppression and realisation of art", as the situationist Guy Debord put it, a radical return to art as communal culture, created and recreated in the act of live participation and interpretation, rather than the fractured acts of production and consumption. The first Slow Art Day was held in 2009, and could become the slow answer to Software Freedom Day. (http://wikis.fu-berlin.de/download/attachments/59080767/Strype-Paper.pdf)
Source: * Paper: Free to Know or Free to Own? Convergence of Free and Slow Culture in Global Relocalisation. by Danyl Strype. Version 1.0 (Sunday September 5, 2010)
URL = http://wikis.fu-berlin.de/download/attachments/59080767/Strype-Paper.pdf