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In the age of AI-generated content and attention harvesting, how do we protect attention and imagination — without fleeing the digital?
I’ve been working on something I call **Neo-Slow Media** since 2021.
It grew out of the 2010s “slow media” movement, but it’s not about digital detox or nostalgia for analog life. It responds to a different moment — one where AI-generated content and AI involvement in making products make up a growing share of what gets created — and asks a different question: how do we protect attention and imagination *from within* the digital, instead of by escaping it?
The core is a simple set of lenses for judging whether an idea (a product, a feature, a piece of content, a campaign…) genuinely serves people, or is just *performing* usefulness for traffic:
**Users vs. People** 🤔
Platforms are designed for predictable, quantifiable *users*. The person on the other side is a *person* — superstitious, seeking recognition, unpredictable. A feature request is often just a symptom of a deeper human need.
**Entertain vs. Engage** 🤔
Entertainment produces pleasure that ends when the screen closes. Engagement rebuilds a person’s relationship to something that matters, and the change persists after they leave.
**Consumptive vs. Productive Friction** 🤔
Not all friction is the enemy. Consumptive friction drains without return. Productive friction costs something and gives back more — skill, reflection, a genuine choice.
The full field guide (with worked examples) and the short manifesto version are here:
https://github.com/xiaojialove-DRP/neo-slow-media
I’d love to hear your thoughts: in the AI era, if we design information and products not for traffic and attention, but to truly serve people — what should that look like? What different approaches or practices have you seen or tried?
#art
I’ve been working on something I call **Neo-Slow Media** since 2021.
It grew out of the 2010s “slow media” movement, but it’s not about digital detox or nostalgia for analog life. It responds to a different moment — one where AI-generated content and AI involvement in making products make up a growing share of what gets created — and asks a different question: how do we protect attention and imagination *from within* the digital, instead of by escaping it?
The core is a simple set of lenses for judging whether an idea (a product, a feature, a piece of content, a campaign…) genuinely serves people, or is just *performing* usefulness for traffic:
**Users vs. People** 🤔
Platforms are designed for predictable, quantifiable *users*. The person on the other side is a *person* — superstitious, seeking recognition, unpredictable. A feature request is often just a symptom of a deeper human need.
**Entertain vs. Engage** 🤔
Entertainment produces pleasure that ends when the screen closes. Engagement rebuilds a person’s relationship to something that matters, and the change persists after they leave.
**Consumptive vs. Productive Friction** 🤔
Not all friction is the enemy. Consumptive friction drains without return. Productive friction costs something and gives back more — skill, reflection, a genuine choice.
The full field guide (with worked examples) and the short manifesto version are here:
https://github.com/xiaojialove-DRP/neo-slow-media
I’d love to hear your thoughts: in the AI era, if we design information and products not for traffic and attention, but to truly serve people — what should that look like? What different approaches or practices have you seen or tried?
#art
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