Concerns about complex, autonomous digital systems have a tendency to focus on harms to individuals—cyber-bullying, data breaches, AI inaccuracies—and sometimes overlook the exploitation of planetary resources and human labour that has informed the rapid pace of development. Rather than simplistic calls to patch up problems, a slow technology approach invites deeper examination of the materials and practices built into devices. Recognising the unsustainability of the current drive to increasing AI-ification and networked societies, this publication from the Slow Research Lab in Amsterdam makes space for over 60 authors from a range of disciplines towards a common purpose, encapsulated in an opening quote Khadijah Abdurahman as "move slow and heal things" (p.15) in direct contrast to the "move fast and break things" mantra of market-led technological entrepreneurship. The many fascinating aspects of this are tackled in 35 chapters, only a handful of which I summarise here.

Editor Carolyn Strauss opens by acknowledging the tools used to bring this publication about, from her lamp, blanket, and table to the words that "scatter into lots of tiny bits to travel across invisible networks"(p.15) and the complexities of trying to build more ethical systems whilst relying on the existing, problematic ones. She advocates for slowness, not just in terms of pace, but attentiveness and accountability, and calls for "other ways forward" (p. 21) based on "witnessing, care and solidarity" (p. 26). Following this introduction, Evelyn Wan expands on the sense of slowness, calling for a break from the time-is-money paradigm, prioritising rest over productivity, "for the body, against the clock"(p.61).

Cláudio Bueno and Moisés Patrício warn of an impending "environment without infrastructures" (p. 118) for which different types of knowledge will be essential, and some of the Slow Technology Reader's authors make a case for learning from earlier technologies, examining the processes which brought them about, their relationships with users and how this might be applied to newer ones. Examples include the chai stall described by Jogi Panghaal; weaver Gleb Maiboroda's comparison of hand and automated looms; and the one-legged stools that encourage the sitter to rock and fidget described by Dakin Hart. Jason Edward Lewis' gives an account of workshops to bring indigenous knowledge into AI development and Suzanne Kite analyses the steps that create a sweat lodge and how these could inform the design of more sustainable computational systems.

Other authors propose new innovations, for example Camilla Sposati's Phonosophia musical instruments and Pia Lindman's Code Chants which are songs to heal specific environments and materials, whilst Laura Coombs, Laurel Schwulst and Mindy Seu's offer an intervention into how citation is punctuated. The artistic practice of opening up ruptures in media in order to expose hidden assumptions in their conventional use is explored in Paula Albuquerque's chapter on working with film archives, "engaging with the glitch and the error as an aesthetic tool" (p. 252) and Marina Orlova's documentation of building a "mentally unstable, neurodivergent chatbot" (p. 275) whilst taking on the role of its increasingly inappropriate therapist.

Another recurring theme is the representation of biological systems as mechanical ones, and vice versa. Silvia Federici writes how "the turning of the body into a machine" changes with each technological age, with 16th and 17th C. bodies "imagined and disciplined according to the model of simple machines, like the pump and the lever" (p. 208) then later the 19th C. steam engine and contemporary computer. Oscar Santillan refers to the work of early cyberneticians and the search for biological computers, as the complexities of photosynthesis mean that "following this computational logic, one realizes that the plant is more complex than the computer" (p. 301).

Particularly inspiring for me is Ovidiu Țichindeleanu and Rolando Vazquez Melken's chapter, The Ladder, Noise and Knots, which uses the image of a pre-historic salt mining ladder "as a sign of what Ivan Illich called 'tools for conviviality'.... it can guide us out of the depths of time, to see through what is normalized, to understand what is going wrong with our technological life" (p. 191). The Slow Technology Reader might also be such a ladder, especially if it gets into the hands of the 'move fast and break things' crowd.

This is a generous book: generous to its many authors who have the space to write in their own styles and from their own perspectives; and generous to its readers, who are given the tools to navigate the many ideas in different ways and add their own notes to the space provided on each page. This makes the book feel initially weighty, but upon reading it becomes lighter. The chapters are typically short, around 10 pages, and can be read in any order, navigation supported by the five themes identified at the start—scaffolding, spectres, rhythm, recalibration and trembling—or by the ingenious method of crossreferencing between chapters that uses marks on the page edge to bring different concepts into conversation with one another. Reading it from cover to cover for this review brought up further connections, with adjoining chapters on textiles or dance, for example. Books are themselves slow technologies and the innovative design of this one, along with the richness of voices and ideas, makes it a "convivial tool".