One of the most surprising cultural eruptions of recent years has to be poker’s arrival as a television sport. Talk about strange bedfellows: poker, when you play it right, is slow; TV is all about speed. In fact, impatient TV producers have favoured the fastest variant of poker and tweaked the rules to make it even faster. But is something being lost in all this acceleration? Victoria Coren, an English journalist and poker aficionado, thinks so. In an article published last year, she laments the way the need for speed is warping her favourite game. Here is her take on it (I don’t understand half the jargon either, by the way): “When a tournament is moving quickly, you have to gamble. In many cases, a re-raise before the flop would put a player all in. There isn’t time to let the cards tell a story, to try “feeler bets” for information, or make a good fold: you just can’t afford to leave chips behind. So, on TV, you often see people gambling in a way that negates much of poker’s thoughtfulness and sophistication – the speed favours luck over skill.” Yet there may be a backlash brewing. Coren writes about the emergence of “slow tournaments” that allocate a full day per game and give the best players the time to strut their stuff.
Category: Blog
Speed walking
Research in 32 cities around the world has revealed that, on average, pedestrians are now walking 10% faster than they did 12 years ago. The acceleration has been most acute in the booming economies of Asia. The Chinese have upped their walking speed by nearly 30%. The weird thing is that some cities with a reputation for being laidback now rank among the fastest. Dublin came fifth and Copenhagen second. As it happens, I was in the Danish capital yesterday and didn’t notice a brisker pace, but maybe it was just a slow day. Here is the conclusion of the head researcher: “People’s walking pace is determined by how much they think they’re in a hurry, how quickly they think they should be doing things…I believe a lot of it is technology-driven. These days, you press send on an email and if someone hasn’t responded in ten minutes, you think: ‘Where are they?'”
Slow music triumphs over PowerPoint
I’m in Copenhagen right now having just given a talk to a corporate audience. The first speaker was interrupted by a strange hiccup in the sound system: in the middle of his presentation, Norah Jones’ song Come Away With Me started playing through the speakers. It was hilarious. And strangely soothing. Suddenly, in the middle of a talk that demanded our attention, we were thrown a life-line, the chance to kick back, switch off and soak up some music. I felt a bit disappointed when the tech-guy pulled the plug on Norah. Still, it gave me an idea. Maybe I should work a brief musical interlude into my talk. Any suggestions welcome. I’m toying with the idea of slipping in a short blast of Slow Hand by the the Pointer Sisters during the sex section….
A lover with a slow hand
A recent poll by the people atRat Race Rebellionhas underlined what many of us know already: that the virus of hurry is taking a heavy toll on our love lives. Nearly 90% of respondents said that a high-stress, over-scheduled, always-on lifestyle was crowding out romance. This jibes with other research showing that more and more of us are now willing to interrupt the act of love to take a cellphone call or read an email. Christine Durst, one of the people behind the Rat Race Rebellion, sums it up neatly: “We’re turning everything on but each other.”
Slow Food Nation
Last night I gave a talk before a screening of Fast Food Nation at a cinema in Bristol, England. An odd movie. The book is an elegant and searing exposé of the fast food industry but something is lost in the jump from the printed page to the big screen. Trying to transform a work of non-fiction reportage into a Robert Altmanesque ensemble piece was never going to be easy, I suppose. It’s worth seeing but if you have to choose between the two then go with the book.
Travel slow
Hardly a week goes by these days without a journalist from somewhere in the world emailing me to talk about the rise of Slow Travel. And no wonder. The fast-forward approach to travel and tourism is taking a heavy toll. The environmental damage caused by our penchant for globetrotting in airplanes is well documented, but it is just the start. When we travel in roadrunner mode, we miss the small details that make each place thrilling and unique. We lose the joy of the journey. And at the end of it all, when every box on our To Do list has been checked, we return home even more exhausted than when we left. That is why Slow Travel is gaining ground. It’s about savouring the journey (traveling by train or barge or bicycle rather than crammed into a middle seat on an EasyJet flight); taking time to engage and learn about the local culture; finding moments to switch off and relax; showing an interest in the effect our visit has on the locals. The current issue of Newsweek Internationalhas a cover story devoted to Slow Travel and its title says it all: Slow is Beautiful.
Slow news
There is nothing a news editor likes less than a slow news day. But maybe that’s exactly what the rest of us need a little more of. In her column in the London Times, Caitlin Moran recently called for a Slow News Movement. By that she means that daily bulletins should clear more space for less dramatic, but more upbeat, news stories: “Something to wean us off bad News Burgers and on to the far more beneficial fruit salad of cheerfulness.” Moran then suggests that the Slow News advocate seek out someone with whom to share the happy tidings. I think she may be stretching the definition of Slow a little here but that’s hardly the end of the world. I for one would definitely welcome less doom and gloom on the evening news.
The party of Slow?
Yesterday I had lunch with the director of the Quality of Life Challenge, a new policy unit attached to the UK Conservative Party. David Cameron, the party’s young leader, has shaken up the polticial landscape not just by changing his hair-style every few days (which he has done) but by stressing the importance of things that never used to register on the Tory radar: the environment, communities, leaving the office in time to be with your children. Can you imagine Margaret Thatcher, a woman who once boasted that her kids only ever fell ill on weekends, talking along these lines? The Quality of Life Challenge is looking for ways to phrase the Cameron message in a way that will win over the Conservative grassroots. The director of the Quality of Life Challenge is exploring how the Slow message might be brought into play. I’m not sure how far this will go, or if Cameron can really move the Conservative party into line with his rhetoric, but it seems to me a good sign that even British Tories are now interested in the Slow revolution. The tectonic plates are shifting….
McYoga, anyone?
How’s this for a sign that the speed culture is on the defensive. A while ago, McDonald’s started offering healthier food like salads and bottled water. Now I’ve just heard that any customer who orders an Asian chicken salad gets a free yoga DVD. Could there be a more absurd paradox? A company that built its fortune on the drive-thru Big Mac encouraging punters to chill out in the Lotus position. I suppose the upside is that this underlines how far the Slow revolution reaches. But I’d be more impressed if McDonald’s took the really bold step of handing out DVDs of Morgan Spurlock’s documentarySuper Size Me.
Slow email
The Slow email movement from IBM has a rival. The good people at Slowlab are developing a new email service that will slow down the pace of electronic messaging. It’s called SLOWmail. It works like this. You tag your message with a description of your relationship with the recipient (lover, sibling, etc), where they are in the world and the mood of the message (ironic, angry, frivolous, etc). Based on this data, as well as on your emailing history with the recipient, the SLOWmail software will then assign a delivery time. You can then track the email’s progress through cyberspace. It all sounds fascinating. If you want to know more, clickHERE.