The Slow Media Project has moved forward by leaps and bounds this month, despite (or perhaps due to) there being scant evidence of such in my blog. Here’s the update:
April 4: The
countdown begins. The magic date for going offline, off-cellphone and
off-Facebook will be Independence Day, of course. Three months
to go, which gives ample time to arrange and publicize alternate methods of
contact that don’t involve e-mail, chat, or text message. For example: I now
have a P.O. Box, and a landline is in the works. I’ve been working for over a
month to unsubscribe from hundreds of e-mail lists -- they’ve really
accumulated during the course of my 20 years “on e-mail” -- so my in-boxes won’t look too daunting when I go back online next year.
April 11-17: National Library Week. The way I see it, the Slow Media movement is about appreciating “heritage” and “heirloom” forms of media and communication, not necessarily rejecting digital ones. So I visited my local branch of the Brooklyn Public Library in Bed-Stuy… Upon inquiring for a new library card, I was directed to apply online at a nearby computer station. Most people there were, in fact, using the public computers or playing CDs and DVDs rather than perusing the stacks or handling dead trees. N.B.: The BPL seems eager to extract money for using their free books; the borrowing card they gave me is labeled “debit card.”
April 19-25: Digital Detox Week. Our neighbors to the North have taken a shine to this notion of Slow Media, as I was interviewed recently for stories by La Presse in Montreal (story here, en francais) and others. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, for example, assigned a “guinea pig” to spend a day offline and report back. And, the whole Digital Detox Week campaign, formerly TV Turnoff Week, comes courtesy of Adbusters.org, which is based in Vancouver.
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