Preface Living Fast and Slow

Abstract

For decades, I have been exploring how to live a rich and meaningful life while participating in both the Fast World and the Slow World—in the fast-paced, crazy-busy, information-intensive world that has become the norm for many of us, and in the slower-paced, calmer world that we sometimes touch in moments of quiet contemplation. I am a computer scientist by training, and for half a century I have been deeply engaged in the digital world and the tech industry. I fi rst learned to program a computer as a teenager, in the mid-1960s, and did a signifi cant amount of computer work in college. I went on to complete a Ph.D. in computer science and artifi cial intelligence at Stanford University and worked for years as a researcher at the famed Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), the Silicon Valley think tank where the networked personal computer was invented. In 2000, I moved from Silicon Valley to Seattle, from one tech mecca to another, to assume my current faculty position at the University of Washington’s Information School, where I conduct research and teach about today’s digital developments. As this brief description makes clear, I know the fast-paced life of the high-tech world quite well. In many ways I have thrived in this milieu. It has allowed me to explore fascinating intellectual and technical