Big Data — Slowness

Slow down to get better results

Carl Hon­oré sug­gests to do every­thing at the right speed — at the ‘tem­po gius­to’ — which means to do every­thing bet­ter and to enjoy every­thing more. Even though speed seems so pro­found in our time, to be faster is not always bet­ter. „Peo­ple sac­ri­fice a lot of good stuff in life on the altar of speed — human spir­it, body, rela­tion­ships or deep­er expe­ri­ences.” Hon­oré says that the „addic­tion to speed evolved due to the IT rev­o­lu­tion”. In his view, Big Data blows away nuances, brings uncer­tain­ty and risks, pre­dicts our future (which he regards as dehu­man­iz­ing) and kills things we love by track­ing and analysing everything.

Carl Hon­oré rec­om­mends to slow down in order to get bet­ter results: get­ting con­trol of what the right time is, using fast short­cuts for slow things and using tech­nol­o­gy with a slow spirit.

Quo­ta­tions:

• „The most joy­ous form of time is when you for­get time.”
• „We have for­got­ten to switch off and to slow down.”
• „We are hur­ry­ing in all aspects of life.”
• „By slow­ing down, one eats, works and lives better.”
• „By pre­dict­ing our future you close oth­er avenues.”
• „What to do with the time we safe?”
• „It is not enough to be indi­vid­ual we also need the social aspect in life”.
• „Rela­tion­ships between peo­ple take time. You can’t build it by upload­ing an App.”
• „Pre­serve nature and live with it.”

Carl Hon­oré is best­seller author, jour­nal­ist and author of the books „In Praise of Slow­ness” or „The Slow Fix”. Some peo­ple call him „spokesman on slow­ness”. He was an expert at our SURPRISE FACTORS SYMPOSIUM in Gmunden.