Slow Internet: A Roadmap to Reclaim the Lost Promise of the Internet

The Internet. How can something we love and need so much also feel like such a burden? How did this remarkable invention go from an exciting promise of closeness and enabled leisure to a thing that often leaves us drained and overwhelmed?

Some 30 years since its wide adoption, these are not rhetorical questions. At this point, we have the data, the lived experience and stellar articulations from leading scholars - laying out how the offer of an interconnected humanity merged into a surveillance apparatus. One where our weakest parts are tracked, recorded and then used against us, in service of other interests than the common good.

Those insights are a great starting point to embark on the journey towards a more human-centric virtual reality. That it's a path we must embark on immediately ought to be self-evident, as the devices hitting the markets in our era make our connected virtuality ever more constant, with decreasing space to escape or even pause our virtual presence.

In this text, the authors - one governance futurist and one altruistic hacker - have synthesised much of the work that has been achieved on specific subsections related to Internet futures and human-centric design, turning the gist of it into three design principles, applicable to everyone interested in online life today. It includes concrete examples of what implementing these principles can look like, making the vision of a happy and healthy virtuality as palpable as possible.

We express a desire to move towards a more uplifting, leisurely and inspiring virtual life. An alternative to the exploitative Stressed Internet of today emerges.

We call it Slow Internet.