Matt Locke has uncovered some wonderful stuff looking into slow networks:

“Googling on information for the slow networks post below, I came across this excellent paper from Princeton about communication networks in 18th Century Paris. The article gives an analysis of ‘Laffaire des Quatorze’ – an investigation by Parisian police into the author of some seditious poetry that had been circulating amongst students, clerks and priests. The interesting thing was that when they started tracing the route of the poetry, there was not the straight line back to an author that they expected, but a complex network of alterations, repurposing and adaptions that criss-crossed between 14 main protagonists (hence ‘The Affair of the Fourteen’). Its almost like a political combination of slow networks and a ‘rip.mix.burn’ philosophy, where the adaptation is part of the condition of a slow network. Very interesting…”

» Test.org.uk: More slowness – “L’affaire des Quatorze”

My project sponsor, Sian, writes:

“The BBC project seeks to engage people in a unique interactive community through which they can make a difference in civic life. The initial aim is to foster communities connecting people interested in the same issues. They will be helped to attract and channel support for their issues, achieving very broadly-defined outcomes, ranging from contact with like people to coverage on BBC networks, with even the occasional possibility of influencing legislation.

To help it become easier to navigate civic life, we will provide a ‘database of democracy’ which people can use to find out who they have to contact on any given issue. We want to provide people with the opportunity and means to participate in democracy at local and national levels, not simply to observe it. This will be a service designed for action, not talk or ‘chat’.”

» OpenDemocracy.net: “The BBC’s plans for digital democracy”

In the Feburary 2003 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology is a little suntin-suntin’ which might be worth looking over:

““The Minority Slowness Effect: Subtle Inhibitions in the Expression of Views Not Shared by Others”
Five studies revealed that people who hold the minority opinion express that opinion less quickly than people who hold the majority opinion. The difference in speed in the expression of the minority and majority opinions grew as the difference in the size of the minority and majority grew. Also, those with the minority view were particularly slow when they assumed the majority to be large, whereas the opposite was true for those with the majority view. The minority slowness effect was not found to be linked to attitude strength, nor was it influenced by anticipated public disclosure of the attitude.”

Slowness in systems is something I’ve been trying to think about for a while, and recent reflection on not-so-smartmobs has reminded me of this. Thing is, nearly everything webby I’ve ever worked on has tried to be as quick, fast, easy and responsive as possible.

The ethnography we had done showed that the processes we are trying to support with our system can typically be ongoing for 2-5 years I.R.L.; and stuff like Robert Axelrod’s “The evolution of cooperation” points to the role of slowness and turn-based systems in reaching concensus-based change [like waiting 4 years before being able to vote for a government… heheh]

Trying to think of networked online systems that are ‘slow’, and so far all I can think of are distributed computing things like Seti@home, or Phil’s Pepysdiary.com. The latter is not so much ‘slow’, but long, if you see what I mean.

Any thoughts?

» Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Feb :”The Minority Slowness Effect: Subtle Inhibitions in the Expression of Views Not Shared by Others”: John N. Bassili [thanks Fiona for this…]