archive.Joe Lamantia.com

In a world that’s moving so fast it’s hard to keep track of when you are, let alone where, there’s a need for experiences that move at more relaxed paces. This basic need for deliberately moderated and human-speed experiences better tuned to the way that people make and understand meaning is the origin of the Slow Food movement.

Naturally, there’s room for a virtual analog of slow food. I’m calling this kind of mediated experience that flows at a kinder, gentler pace “slow media”. Dawdlr, “a global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: what are you doing, you know, more generally?” is a good example.

Assembled one postcard at a time, Dawdlr exemplifies the collective form of Slow Media, one you can contribute to by creating some content using a standard interface and then submitting it for publication, as long as it carried the proper postage. The paper blog – now updated and known as papercast – might be a precursor.

What are some other examples of Slow Media? Back in January of 2007, AdBusters asked, “Isn’t it time to slow down?” during their national slowdown week.

Slow food has a website, annual gatherings, publications, a manifesto, even a mascot / icon – the snail of course. What’s next for slow media? Maybe a slow wiki, made up of image-mapped screen shots of chalkboards with writing?

“On average, a new record is added to the WorldCat database every 10 seconds. Watch it happen live…” Watch WorldCat grow
According to the About page:
“WorldCat is the world’s largest bibliographic database, the merged catalogs of thousands of OCLC member libraries. Built and maintained collectively by librarians, WorldCat itself is not an OCLC service that is purchased, but rather provides the foundation for many OCLC services and the benefits they provide.”
Here’s what went into the system while I was typing this entry out:
———————
The following record was added to WorldCat on 08/10/2005 9:08 PM
Total holdings in WorldCat: 999,502,692
OCLC Number: 61245112
Title: Theological and cultural studies in honor of Simon John De Vries /
Publisher: T. & T. Clark International,
Publication Date: c2004.
Language: English
Format: Book
Contributed by: SAINT PATRICK’S SEMINARY LIBR
———–
Some impressive WorldCat statistics from the OCLC site:
Between July 2004 and June 2005:

• WorldCat grew by 4.6 million records
• Libraries used WorldCat to catalog and set holdings for 51.9 million items and arrange 9.4 million interlibrary loans
• Library staff and users conducted 34.7 million searches of WorldCat via FirstSearch for research and reference, and to locate materials

Also:

• WorldCat has 57,968,788 unique bibliographic records
• 53,548 participating libraries worldwide use and contribute to WorldCat
• Every 10 seconds an OCLC member library adds a record to WorldCat
• Every 4 seconds an OCLC member library fills an interlibrary loan request using WorldCat
• Every second a library user searches WorldCat using FirstSearch

For us information types, it beats the hell out of the old population clocks that the U.S. Census Bureau still runs for the US and the world.
BTW, for the curious, “According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, the resident population of the United States, projected to 08/11/05 at 01:24 GMT (EST+5) is 296,854,475”

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Cen­turies from now, robot arche­ol­o­gists from future soci­eties will dis­cover these acro­bat­i­cally inclined fig­urines made of cir­cuit com­po­nents at a dig site on the loca­tion of a long-forgotten human city, and mis­tak­enly label them as reli­gious fer­til­ity icons cre­ated by early com­puter artists dur­ing the dawn of the new machine age…
Or. in the words of the co-worker who sent me this origin­gally, “And for those who’ve seen Team Amer­ica World Police, this is nuthin’.”

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Instructions from the Doctors Without Borders field manual
“The simple pit latrine is one of the simplest and cheapest means of disposing of human wastes. If well designed and built, correctly sited and well maintained, it contributes significantly to the prevention of feco-orally transmitted diseases.”
I’m not sure how you’re supposed to download and print these from the Web if you’re in a location without plumbing, but then again I suppose that’s what satelltie phones are for…

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Found this morning on the BBCi while looking for something completely different –
“Sensation Seeking Scale
This questionnaire is designed to test your tendency towards varied, novel and intense senations. This is sometimes known as thrill-seeking or arousal seeking.”

Here’s the link: Sensation Seeking Scale