The Turtle aims at creating a space of thought and praxis, without staying behind on the news. In the fable of Aesop The Hare & The Tortoise, the ingenious creature with the hard shell who ‘hastens slowly’ towards the finish line, wins the race, even though it has to compete with the speedy hare.
The Turtle (with the accompanying motto ‘More Haste Less Speed’) is based upon the concepts of acceleration and deceleration. Μarshall Μcluhan (1911–1980) and Paul Virilio (1932–2018) are among the few philosophers who examined in depth the relation of Speed and Media, analysing the effects in politics, aesthetics, ethics, and in life, in general.
The Canadian theoretician spoke first about the phenomenon of ‘optical stress’ which is created by the mass media (beginning from the invention of typography), and on the other hand the important French intellect noted that in the accelerated society, that we are living in, time gets levelled down and the energy of man’s capacity for thinking is reduced: «In today’s world», he notes in his book the Pure War, «the real time has no thought». There is some sort of violence in the diaspora of data, especially today when speed is counted in nanoseconds and communication never stops. We believe information should be performed with a proper balance of urgency and diligence.
