Alex Maughan adds his thoughts to the “fast web” discussion in The Slow Web and the Thievery of Fast Lifestyles:

We are philics of immediate gratification, ticket holders impatiently awaiting our entrance into the never-ending show of serial distractions. Far too many of us are phobic of the good stuff. The stuff that takes emotional maturity. The stuff that takes time, and doesn’t constantly pat you on the back for every small thing you do. The stuff you don’t find on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Dribble. The stuff that requires you to exist without constant, yet ultimately spurious, forms of reinforcement; without any distractions; without the need to bolster your perceived self-worth by harvesting as many Likes as you can for every little asinine thing we spit out onto the Web. We increasingly shy away from the stuff that requires a longer form of consideration to ripen.

The post ends with some guidelines that he’s setting for himself to fight this problem. It’s worth reading.

Just over a week ago Frank Chimero tweeted, “Time to close the computer.” He then deleted his entire tweet history and unfollowed everyone he used to follow. Today that tweet is gone as well, his avatar is a dog, and he follows 3 very different people and 1 bot (@Horse_ebooks, of course).

I don’t know if that story means anything, but Frank is a pretty famous designer, and all I’m saying is that something is going on. Everywhere I look I see people behaving like they just fell off a chair on the Axiom only to realize that staring at a screen all their waking hours isn’t as fantastic as they thought it was.

Maybe it is time to close the computer.