The Slow Web Movement

by Steven Brenner

“The Slow Movement advocates a cultural shift toward slowing down life’s pace. It began with Carlo Petrini’s protest against the opening of a McDonald’s restaurant in Piazza di Spagna, Rome in 1986 that sparked the creation of the Slow Food organization. Over time, this developed into a subculture in other areas, such as Cittaslow (Slow Cities), Slow living, Slow Travel, and Slow Design.” – from Wikipedia.

So what does “The Slow Web” mean?

For me, the key element to The Slow Movement is that we don’t strive for slow, simply because we prefer it and think it’s better.  The movement is about doing things in the amount of time it takes to do them right, and to avoid speeding them up, thinking that faster is always better, and sacrificing the quality as a result.

If you want to make a kickass Ribollita (bean soup), you have to soak the beans overnight, then boil them for at least a few hours, checking almost constantly that it’s not drying out, but that it’s reducing enough, while not sticking to the bottom of the pan.  Cutting any of these corners to save time will yield a disaster of a soup.  The time it takes is the time it takes and it happens to be a fairly slow process.

For us, The Slow Web means using technology and the internet to be speedy and efficient, but not to replace human interactions with automated algorithms and canned responses.  Instant gratification is nice, but getting things done right is certainly better.

Taking the time to do things right.  This means waiting a few hours for a response from a human instead of an instant response from a machine that’s guessing the human’s response.  It means waiting up to a day to get a confirmation letter but knowing that once confirmed, it’s been done by human beings who have connected with each other.  It means that when you need help, there are real people and not just a page of FAQs; and that those real people, to get things done right, might need to request some patience from you and take the time to make some phone calls to resolve your problems.

We think your travel plans deserve more than an automated system.  We can’t accept someone’s plans getting ruined based on a “glitch in the system”.  You deserve that someone take the time to read your questions and comments and notes and do what’s best for you.  We do this as fast and efficiently as possible, but believe in maintaining this inherently slower approach because we believe it’s better.