Slow Movement

In LaPIS today, we had a guest lecturer who is presently ‘doing’ her PhD. Each week we have a different person, giving us a different view on the Information Sciences.

We’ve had a woman who carries a load of donated books around the world, sets herself up anywhere she wants and says she’s a library.

We’ve had a young woman who works for a publishing house who was so soft, I still couldn’t tell you what she talked about.

We’ve had Frank Webster who was absolutely brilliant. He put me on to a couple of authors who are fantastic. He’s a sociologist.

Today was the second last LaPIS class (the rest of uni is now finished but because of Easter, and specifically Good Friday, we have another week to go for this module). Today’s guest speaker told us about how the slow movement can be applied to information or, rather, whether it should.

The Slow Movement started in Italy. This guy was sick of Fast Food so he set about starting a revolution. It’s not just the idea of cooking from scratch – the opposite of Fast Food – but also creating the food for yourself in the first place. It’s about being a huge part of nature, taking it slow and becoming one with it. Anyway, it’s very famous and has been applied to other areas of life such as business.

This woman’s thesis is that we are, in the Information Society, a bunch of Infomaniacs and wouldn’t it be better if we were Infodiverse. Some of what she said made sense but a lot was a bit rubbish. It was like she’d struck on a good idea for her doctorate but then it didn’t really go anywhere so she twaddled around and came up with the stuff we saw today. Anyway, it was entertaining enough. She had Maria convinced.

Afterwards we had a half hour talk about an article that the lecturer had read lately. Bit of a waste of time, if you ask me, although Mirinda claims that’s what they all do. I guess in a way, they do, but it’s not usually ONE article they talk about.

Then to Waterloo, meet Mirinda and come home.

In keeping with recent blog entries, I’ve included another tulip photo.