Paced to Process: Why ‘Slow’ Tech Matters

Humans. We’re solo taskers. It’s what our minds were evolved to do.

Hello, Peri Fractic here. Am I crazy, or are all the systems we use trying so desperately to get us to split our focus? Or divert our attention? Or straight up steal our intention?

The world is accelerating. We’re asked to do more and more in the same amount of time, which of course, takes longer, because we’re exhausted. We’re also told that to be healthy we need to sleep better and longer, we need to cultivate stillness through meditation, we need to exercise, we need a social life, we need family time, we need a creative outlet, we need to eat healthy, homecooked foods. And all the productivity tools and AI agents in the world can’t invent the time to do all the things to make us healthy.

We have to do that ourselves. And we have to celebrate even our minor victories.

I believe Commodore can help provide the space for minor victories in our modern world. To act as a speed bump for your mind.

Yes, before you say it aloud, I was the one who put ‘Digital Detox’ on our packaging. I heard all the questions since. ‘How can a computer qualify as Digital Detox? It’s not tea. Or a detox retreat in the mountains. You’re on a screen if you’re using a Commodore, aren’t you? Aren’t we trying to get rid of screen time?’

Those questions bring a smile to my face. Mostly because you guys care. And also because they remind me of my mother telling teenage me to get off my Commodore 64. To stop watching Knight Rider on that TV. It’ll make your eyes go crossed! I’m sure you heard something similar from your parents. They assumed we were rotting our brains. So Mum, if you can hear this, let’s talk about that! (with the benefit of decades of hindsight!)

Yes, I played games. Side by side with my friends. Sometimes on my own. But games were designed different back then. The phrase “toxic tech” didn’t exist, yet we were using tech. The difficulty, the lack of hand-holding and onboarding, the lack of save points… these were resilience building, not damaging. It taught us problem solving skills, how to manage frustration, how to zoom out, and that nothing in life would just be handed to you. That’s the opposite of toxicity.

And that low-resolution graphics let our imaginations flourish to fill in the blanks. “The greatest graphics are in your mind”, said the posters of one software publisher. Today’s games leave no room for imagination. No room for much of anything, frankly. When I boot up Cyberpunk 2077, it’s not to do some netrunning to overheat a baddie’s eyeballs while he’s trying to slaughter me, it’s to walk quietly through the streets of Night City soaking in the stunning retrofuturistic ambience, imagining I’m there. Because I miss games that truly let you imagine.

But yes, we didn’t know games back then were building our resilience and world building in our minds. But I did way more than just game.

It was the start of my musical journey. I learned about music, how to play music, and started to compose music. This has followed me throughout my life.

It was the start of my coding journey too. I loved and still love the demo scene. Learning to code taught me similar things as the games. Hard things took time. Limitations breed creativity. There was always a solution if you looked at the problem from the right angle. That you could only work with the tools you had, and even those could do more than their designers imagined if you got clever enough.

I wrote, I designed flyers, I created art, I won contests. The Commodore 64 began my love affair with computers. They became a home for some of my hobbies, which turned into a YouTube channel, which turned into a career, which turned into my turn as CEO of Commodore. I never could’ve planned all that, but here we are, and I wouldn’t change it.

I never realized it when I was a teenager. Heck, I didn’t realize it til a few years ago, long after the Retro Recipes channel found its audience. Looking back, I see so clearly. I kept coming back because it felt like being home, back in my room, about to explore. There was space for anticipation, there was space to breathe, there was a feeling that I was right where I wanted to be.

I still get that feeling today.

I look at the communities, decades old, that thrive around the Commodore products from 30 years ago. I see the incredibly touching messages about how much the reboot of a childhood brand means to them. It’s an important part of their life. It’s somewhere they can go to restore themselves. Yeah, me too.

So, yes, not all screen time is equal. And yes, I firmly believe that Commodore can be self care. It is for me, and I know that’s true for so many in the community.

And let me be clear, we also want people outside, with their friends, with their families, sharing time. That’s a big part of being and feeling human.

But one of the hills I will die on as the CEO of a legacy tech company, is that the skills and joys of using foundational computers are critically important.

Doomscrolling social media feeds is not.

Today’s tools make it so easy to feel so good at something so fast. Pride comes from the process. Skill comes from making mistakes.

So back to the title of this article, which I realize I’ve left curiously hanging…

Life is fast. Getting faster. And our tech is yanking us along in that direction. Everything is available in a moment. Everything is easy. Very little is earned.

Our products slow you down. It takes a minute (sometimes seven) to load. And that’s ok. No, really. It is. You can sit there with the process. Some might even call it meditation. (See Mum?) Patience is a virtue that we’re losing the space to learn. Processing our lives only happens when we slow down enough to let it happen. Joy is found when we’re present with one thing at a time, even if it’s a vintage form of ‘screen-time’.

Commodore creates this space. Its creations are paced to process. At a time when people are craving that space, and that pace, more than ever.

The Commodore 64 Ultimate is a computer that wants nothing from you.

And I firmly believe that’s the right way to run a technology corporation.

❤️ All of us at Commodore

Peri Fractic
President, CEO, & Chief Joystick Waggler