Slowing Down | Open World

Slowing Down | Open World
Open World
Lorna M Campbell
I’ve been thinking a lot about slowness and refusal; in technology, in practice, in life more generally.
Slowness and refusal was the focus of an Edinburgh Futures Institute Contested Computing event earlier this month on
Imagining Feminist Technofutures
, with Sharon Webb, Usha Raman, Mar Hicks, and Aisha Sobey. In a wide ranging discussion that questioned the dominance of techno-solutionism, the biases and inequalities that are encoded in technology, and the role of education in countering these historical structures of dominance, the panel touched on feminist refusal and the importance of “slowing down” development cycles in order to hold tech companies to account and give corrective measures and ways of refusal a chance to thrive. Slowing down can be seen as a form of progressive innovation, a way to offer resistance, and academia is a space where this can be brought to life.
(I couldn’t help thinking about my own domain of open education where there has always been a tendency to privilege techno-solutionism as the height of innovation. Going right back to the early days of learning objects, there has been a tension between those who take a programmatic, content-centric view of open education, and those who focus more on the affordances of open practice.  Proselytising about the transformative potential of
generative AI education
is just the latest incarnation of this dichotomy.)
Recognising the value of refusal brought to mind a point Helen Beetham made in her
ALT Winter Summit
keynote last December, which I’m still thinking about, slowly.
Helen called for universities to share their research and experience of AI openly, rather than building their own walled gardens, as this is just another source of inequity.  As educators we hold a key ethical space.  We have the ingenuity to build better relationships with this new technology, to create ecosystems of agency and care, and empower and support each other as colleagues.
Helen ended by calling for spaces of principled refusal within education. In the learning of any discipline there may need to be spaces of principled refusal, this is a privilege that education institutions can offer.
During the Technofutures event, Sharon Webb asked “where is the feminist joy we can take from these things? How can we share our feminist practice and make community accessible?”
This is a question that Frances Bell, Guilia Forsythe, Lou Mycroft, Anne-Marie Scott and I tried to address in the chapter we contributed to Laura Czerniewicz and Catherine Cronin’s generative book
Higher Education for Good
“HE4Good assemblages: FemEdTech Quilt of Care and Justice in Open Education”
explores the creation of the FemEdTech quilt assemblage through a “slow ontology of feminist praxis”. Quilting, and other forms of communal making, have always provided a space for women to share their skill, labour and practice on their own terms outwith the strictures of capitalist society and institutions that seek to exploit and appropriate their labour.  These are also a space that necessarily invite us to slow down.  Contributors to the FemEdTech quilt were
“compelled by the process to decelerate, helping them to curate, to stitch, to draw, to write, and to think. We acknowledge the pressures of the time: being creative in neoliberal times is itself a form of resistance.
Resistance requires radical rest (rest for health, rest for hope). The slow ontology of the assemblage required waves and pauses which allowed space to think. This may be the most crucial resistance of all in an industrialised HE which fills every potential pause with compliance activity. Feminists create, feminists resist, and feminists celebrate difference.”
This is how we can share our feminist joy; by decelerating, by sharing our feminist practices and making our communities accessible, through networks like
FemEdTech
Of course it’s difficult to disentangle the process of sharing practice and building community from the technology, and particularly the social media, that mediates so much of our lives. The exodus of users from X to Bluesky at the end of the year promoted some interesting conversations on Mastodon about the role of different social media platforms.  I particularly appreciated this
conversation
with Robin de Rosa and Kate Bowles about the ability of Mastodon to provide a space for “big thinking” and slowing down.
I’ve been forced to embrace slowness on a more personal level this year as a result of serious ongoing health issues.  Its been a salutary reminder that although our practice is mediated by technology, it is still
embodied
and that ultimately it’s that embodiment that governs our ability to work, create, and contribute to our communities.  I’m still trying to figure out what all this means on both a personal and professional level; how to make slowing down and refusal a conscious progressive act, and to find the joy in embracing radical rest for health and hope.  Like the FemEdTech quilt and network, it’s a slow process of becoming.
6 thoughts on “
Slowing Down
I love this post, Lorna. Thanks for sharing it. Slowing down is something I have been thinking a lot about, too – especially how to reframe my own expectations when doing less. Curious to see where your thinking heads. Maybe we can chat sometime.
Reply
Thank you for sharing such a sensitive and thoughtful post, Lorna. I’ve replied on Mastodon but you still have me thinking, so I’m going “old school” with a blog comment 🙂 Your cite your HE4Good chapter about the FemEdTech Quilt. Though it was written before the AI tsunami, you aptly note we have lived through similar times of change and techno-solutionism before. Regarding this, that chapter contains so much wisdom re the importance of coalition, resistance and slowing down.
I’m also nodding with you, Kate and Robin about using different social media spaces. I really appreciate the slow and fuller conversations on Mastodon, and in a different way, also appreciate the familiar network on Bluesky. All is so different to the early days of Twitter, of course. One finding from the recent Engine Room report (advice for social justice organisations) resonates strongly, i.e. that “transition to a ‘pluriverse’ of community spaces is more desirable than a transition to specific platforms.”
(thanks to Leslie Chan for this)
Finally, Lorna, I’m sorry that the year has been so challenging for you, and am sending you much love and healing wishes. Hope we’ll get to meet up soon.
x Catherine
Reply
I’m coming here with an old school reply too, partly to mark an intent to return to writing alongside you in 2025.
I was so interested to read this after the widely shared essay by Sharon Mattern that takes a different feminist position on refusal.
I read it several times and I feel we’re thinking about two opposing refusals: the refusal of specific demands within the system as it is, and the refusal of the system. System level refusal begins with commitment to walking slowly, thinking deeply—thinking very critically as you do here about the AI promise that radical change is the same old but faster. That makes it so clear that AI is not offering critique, it’s just endorsement on stilts.
But as you and Sharon both say, the body is its own gate that can’t be endlessly kept open.
Thank you truly for your words.
Reply
So much clarity in what you’ve written here, Lorna. I’m struck by how it resonates with “the season that’s in it” that’s flashing and pulsing furiously all round me as I read it, from which I have more and more chosen to divest and withdraw. Like you and others here, by necessity as well as choice, I’m embracing the slower freer lanes (and somehow life is richer for it). Here’s to a slower, freer, 2025.
Reply
Lorna – thanks for writing this post. It is giving me so much food for thought. We have already promised each other a leisurely chat in the New Year and now I am looking forward even more to talking with you then. I know we will talk about our experiences in common of enforced slowness. I am in the aftermath of a significant house move, trying to accept that I must allow myself time to tackle all the changes ahead, needing rest after all the changes we have recently experienced.
Thinking about what Catherine says about about a pluriverse of community spaces, I smiled to think about me recently dipping my toes into the Bluesky “water” ( they barely got wet). I think of my pluriverse as being largely of absences from community spaces. Thinking of Lou M introducing me to the concept of radical rest, I can start to see parallels with community engagement where absences can be radical, sometimes necessary and occasionally transformative. Speak soon(ish) dear friend.
Reply
As always, an incisive and care-ful post Lorna. Over the last few years I’ve often felt like I’m running to stand still, trying to get everything done and never feeling particularly satisfied with the results – so your comments about the importance of decelerating really hit home. Thanks for writing.
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