Why look at information technology in India at a design conference in Europe?
We’re looking at global phenomena here. And what’s interesting is that in India we see many of the cultural dilemmas of speed, perhaps even more so. The Indian case amplifies for us what’s at stake in the current debate about designing information technology for social needs. And speaking about fastness and slowness as design criteria, modern India has always been a society where more than one speed reigns. We do well to learn from the world’s largest democracy, which is now linking all of the 600.000 Indian villages to the telephone, within a cultural context that is essentially low-speed.
