• Slow Computing

    From Ben Collver@21:1/5 to All on Thu May 30 19:12:00 2024
    Slow Computing
    ==============

    ... the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a
    scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its
    recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of
    attention. - Herb Simon, 1971

    Another aspect of contemporary screen-based culture is the constant
    psychic conflict often referred to as the "Attention Economy". In just
    trying to watch one youtube video, a typical user is confronted with
    dozens of other appeals to focus somewhere else: comments, ratings,
    related videos, advertisements, video responses, etc. Because
    screen-based interaction is premised on temporal immediacy, we are, as
    users forced into a state of hyper-attention where we must constantly
    fight against the, largely commercial, attempts to make us look at
    something else. When we remove the screen (and by necessity, simplify
    the interface) we introduce a new form of temporality, where the speed
    of interaction might more accurately reflect our ability to perceive
    and understand information.

    And by slowing down the interaction, without removing our access to information, we return a bit of control to the user who is now free to integrate these printed artifacts into her physical surroundings.
    Instead of contorting our bodies and focusing exclusively on a square
    of glass, we bring the digital into a tangible world where we are free
    to move around, rearrange our desk and incorporate them in our embodied
    social life. Instead of contorting our homes and offices with complex, error-prone IT systems as proposed by the "Internet of Things" (IoT),
    we create "things of the internet", dumb objects which become
    sophisticated only in their content and context.

    From: <http://screenl.es/slow.html>

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  • From Julieta Shem@21:1/5 to Ben Collver on Thu May 30 19:35:08 2024
    Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> writes:

    Slow Computing
    ==============

    ... the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a
    scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information
    consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its
    recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of
    attention. - Herb Simon, 1971

    Beautiful quote from 1971.

    Another aspect of contemporary screen-based culture is the constant
    psychic conflict often referred to as the "Attention Economy". In just
    trying to watch one youtube video, a typical user is confronted with
    dozens of other appeals to focus somewhere else: comments, ratings,
    related videos, advertisements, video responses, etc. Because
    screen-based interaction is premised on temporal immediacy, we are, as
    users forced into a state of hyper-attention where we must constantly
    fight against the, largely commercial, attempts to make us look at
    something else. When we remove the screen (and by necessity, simplify
    the interface) we introduce a new form of temporality, where the speed
    of interaction might more accurately reflect our ability to perceive
    and understand information.

    And by slowing down the interaction, without removing our access to information, we return a bit of control to the user who is now free to integrate these printed artifacts into her physical surroundings.
    Instead of contorting our bodies and focusing exclusively on a square
    of glass, we bring the digital into a tangible world where we are free
    to move around, rearrange our desk and incorporate them in our embodied social life. Instead of contorting our homes and offices with complex, error-prone IT systems as proposed by the "Internet of Things" (IoT),
    we create "things of the internet", dumb objects which become
    sophisticated only in their content and context.

    From: <http://screenl.es/slow.html>

    *Very* interesting.

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  • From Stefan Ram@21:1/5 to Ben Collver on Thu May 30 23:40:21 2024
    Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> wrote or quoted:
    Slow Computing

    First, there was "fast food" (a term coined in the 1950s).
    In 1986, Carlo Petrini in Rome coined "slow food" as a counterterm.

    What's vying for our attention, broadly speaking, is advertising.
    And we encounter it just as much in printed magazines as on
    computer screens. For me, it's not necessarily a question of speed.
    In fact, I see more opportunities to filter out ads on the computer.

    I've develop a custom program that curates the news reports
    I consume by filtering out content deemed trivial, such as
    gossip and frivolous matters.

    Through the use of keywords, my program eliminates articles
    containing specific phrases or terms associated with such
    trivialities, much like it would filter out advertisements.

    For instance, if a news item's description includes the string
    "Prince Harry", that particular story would be automatically
    omitted from my view, courtesy of this program.

    This Python program demonstrates the fundamental process.

    fn = '''output-file-20240531003240-tmpdml.html'''
    output = open( fn, "w", errors='ignore' )
    uri = fr'''http://example.com/article_list.html'''
    request = urllib.request.Request( uri )
    resource = urllib.request.urlopen( request )
    cs = resource.headers.get_content_charset()
    content = resource.read().decode( cs, errors="ignore" )
    # assuming each article link is in an element of type "p"
    for p in re.finditer( r'''<p[^\001]*?</p>''', content, flags=re.DOTALL ):
    if "Prince Harry" not in p.group( 0 ):
    print( p.group( 0 ), file=output )
    output.close()
    subprocess.Popen( fn, shell=True ) # opens the output file in a browser!

    But yes, writing all these Python programs does slow me down . . .

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  • From candycanearter07@21:1/5 to Julieta Shem on Sun Jun 2 18:45:02 2024
    Julieta Shem <jshem@yaxenu.org> wrote at 22:35 this Thursday (GMT):
    Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> writes:

    Slow Computing
    ==============

    ... the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a
    scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information
    consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its
    recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of
    attention. - Herb Simon, 1971

    Beautiful quote from 1971.

    Another aspect of contemporary screen-based culture is the constant
    psychic conflict often referred to as the "Attention Economy". In just
    trying to watch one youtube video, a typical user is confronted with
    dozens of other appeals to focus somewhere else: comments, ratings,
    related videos, advertisements, video responses, etc. Because
    screen-based interaction is premised on temporal immediacy, we are, as
    users forced into a state of hyper-attention where we must constantly
    fight against the, largely commercial, attempts to make us look at
    something else. When we remove the screen (and by necessity, simplify
    the interface) we introduce a new form of temporality, where the speed
    of interaction might more accurately reflect our ability to perceive
    and understand information.

    And by slowing down the interaction, without removing our access to
    information, we return a bit of control to the user who is now free to
    integrate these printed artifacts into her physical surroundings.
    Instead of contorting our bodies and focusing exclusively on a square
    of glass, we bring the digital into a tangible world where we are free
    to move around, rearrange our desk and incorporate them in our embodied
    social life. Instead of contorting our homes and offices with complex,
    error-prone IT systems as proposed by the "Internet of Things" (IoT),
    we create "things of the internet", dumb objects which become
    sophisticated only in their content and context.

    From: <http://screenl.es/slow.html>

    *Very* interesting.


    Agreed, it was quite a neat read.
    --
    user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

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