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At issue: Good.is asked some of the world’s most prominent futurists to explain why slowness might be as important to the future as speed. I’ve excerpted some of my favorite bits here:

Still from Tortoise Beats Hare by Tex Avery

Bruce Sterling

The science-fiction author Bruce Sterling says “pace layering”—the idea that different layers of a structure or a system move at different speeds—is an interesting notion when considering slowness, as it helps to explain the various rates of change associated with different sectors of society.

“The slow movement imagines itself to belong by rights to the cultural layer”—a slow-moving layer of society—“but it’s still in the layer of fashionable activism,” he says. “An earthquake is rapid and shocking, it seems, but the underlying forces are geologically slow. So it’s actually our perception of pacing that’s odd, not pacing itself.”

The value in slowness, according to Sterling, is that people take a lot of comfort in measuring themselves against things that change slowly. “If everything in our lifetime changed at the same pace that we ourselves changed, we would never understand our own maturity.”

John Maeda

Maeda sees the benefits of fast and slow: problem-solving “with dirty hands” at rapid speeds, as well as critical thinking and critical making at slow enough speeds to allow for the contemplation of the implications of art and design to the greater world.

Again, it’s about balance. And pacing. “You can’t sprint forever, but you can pull your pace down. I’m a jogger—a very slow runner. My runs help me reconnect to my body and re-sort the contents of my brain.”

For Maeda, the fundamental question becomes, “How do we slow down what matters the most and speed up what benefits change and progress? We don’t want to impede progress, but we are seeking reconnection to ourselves, to each other, and with the world.”

Alexander Rose

Rose importantly notes: “I think the slow movement is very First-World-urban-environment targeted. If you’re an agrarian human, slow food is actually your only option. So we need to be careful not to overly romanticize ‘slow’ in this way. There’s a balance between poverty and privilege.”