In today's neoliberal society, learning is imperative, demanding rapid assimilation of new information. Platforms like Wikipedia play a crucial role in facilitating this pursuit, with numerous studies emphasizing their educational benefits and their impact on enhancing the learning experience. However, a significant concern revolves around the temporal dimension inherent in this narrative. 

What Rosa(2013) calls technological acceleration causes us to feel that we must speed up to keep pace with the changes of everyday life, i.e., social acceleration. This in turn causes several problems, such as the decrease in “real” production or consumption due to time constraints. For education in the broad sense, this necessitates accelerated learning, risking the creation and grasping of knowledge (which run parallel to what Rosa calls production and consumption), i.e. that it isn’t “real” grasping and creation anymore. Technological and social acceleration are intertwined, necessitating consideration of both aspects to address the challenges they pose. 

Motivated by the narrative of accelerated learning, this study employs a Science and Technology Studies (STS) perspective to investigate if Wikipedia replicates this narrative. This perspective means that Wikipedia is seen as a specific effect generated by the interplay of different actors in a specific setting. This approach allows for seeing how a practice like Wikipedia is enacted and for identifying important actors and micro-practices.  

Aligned with the broader field of STS, akin to Thompson's research (2012), it enables exploration of how networks, composed of human actors and non-human actors (including technologies) alike, structure and restructure the world in particular ways (Law, 2004). This approach sensitizes us to the fact that both human actors and non-human actors are needed to enact any practice and it helps us to see how that relation between actors enacts something like a policy document, educational technology, a website like Wikipedia or even knowledge (Thompson, 2010, p. 95; Decuypere & Simons, 2016). 

One of the main interests of STS is the how-question: how particular things come to be (Decuypere & Simons, 2016; Sorenson, 2008). The goal is, then, to investigate how a relational constellation - a network - is distributed and to convey in what way a practice is performed. The goal in this contribution is to detangle the practice of Wikipedia. What I mean by this is the following: in a traditional representational approach, some actors that play a critical role are overlooked or ignored, they get “black boxed” (Decuypere & Simons, 2016, p.34). The objective is to open that black box, to look at the actors involved in the enactment of Wikipedia, to investigate how they are distributed and relate to each other, and to see how they effectuate Wikipedia (Decuypere & Simons, 2016). This approach ensures an apt vocabulary to describe this and open the black box that is Wikipedia.  

Engaging as a Wikipedia editor and documenting activities, I constructed socio-material anecdotes, facilitating the creation of detailed mappings. This approach led me to the discovery of how the interplay of certain actors with other actors enact a rhythm. Thus, an STS approach made it possible to see that there are multiple acceleration dynamics that influence the learning and knowledge production practices on Wikipedia. However, instead of completely following today's dominant narrative on acceleration in learning, my research also demonstrated multiple deceleration dynamics. 

I conclude this paper by stating that these deceleration practices play an important role in the quality of learning and knowledge production. Secondly, I point out that only by slowing down myself, I was able to investigate these practices. It is thus important for future research to slow down to focus on the unprecedented possibilities in and of the present. 

To detangle Wikipedia, I partook in the everyday practice of Wikipedia, i.e. I (mainly) expanded and edited existing online articles. The point was to analyse how actions and practices come about through and in relationships. A way of capturing this, was by recording the edits I made. The goal of using screen recordings was “to bring objects out of the background” (Thompson, 2012, p. 98) and to push my own vision to the background. The next step was to identify events. Here, I “followed the actors”: I observed what an actor compels other actors to do (Thompson, 2012; Latour, 2005). The following questions were posed to direct the selection process: Who or what is acting, what are they doing and what is related to what? (Adams & Thompson, 2016, p. 33). These questions were not only leading for the selection process but also for the writing of the socio-material anecdotes. These anecdotes were a way to “turn a technological object into the central character of a narrative” (Latour, 1996, p. vii). These anecdotes, written with an averted vision, provide actors a way to speak as well as a way to speak with them. They provide us with a space to grasp what is happening, to analyze the conversation, by allowing us to start from the event at hand and “trace out a range of associations” (Michael, 2000, p. 14; Adams & Thompson, 2016). They allow us to slow down and really pay attention to the technological (Thompson, 2012). The second “layer” of analysis lies in simultaneously unravelling translations. Translations give an insight in how assemblages develop and “how actors interface with others” (Adams & Thompson, 2016, p. 8). Translation indicates an ordering in the network: Translation thus is a process that effectuates ordering effects, a process of actors negotiating with other actors for a place in a heterogeneous network (Adams & Thompson, 2016; Law, 1992; Latour & Woolgar, 1979). The goal here was to see how the patterning of an assemblage came into being. Where in the first layer of analysis the focus was on asking questions about what relates to what, this layer emphasizes the how (Adams & Thompson, 2016). Thus, here, I examine how actors influence each other and enact certain practices and more importantly, particular rhythms.

Due to my analysis, I was able to detail multiple acceleration practices. An STS lens allowed me to follow certain actors and discover how not only knowledge gets enacted but also time. The acceleration narrative in learning can be found on Wikipedia. However, Wikipedia is not only characterized by acceleration practices, which correspond with the dominant learning narrative, but Wikipedia also has a lot of practices in place to counter this. For every acceleration, a deceleration can be found. This already starts with the content policy. By encouraging reliable sources and neutral language, a Wikipedian is naturally forced to slow down, to hesitate, to think. Other deceleration practices ensure time, time for the Wikipedian to think about what they edited, deleted, reverted, ... In sum: to hesitate. I thus found two main categories, practices of acceleration and practices of deceleration, which severely impact important parts of the learning on and with Wikipedia. Subsequently I categorized these practices by introducing further subcategories. Practices that accelerate the learning experience can be divided into 3 subcategories: (1) practices that accelerate knowledge production, (2) practices that accelerate the verification process of knowledge production and (3) practices that enable the learner to learn faster. Next to the acceleration practices, another important set of practices was found. This set concerns practices that decelerate, viz. that slow down (1) the production of knowledge, (2) the verification of said knowledge and (3) learning. An important concluding note is that these results were only possible because I, myself, was forced to slow down. The anecdotes here were an aid that forced me to slow down, and it was only then I was able to map the acceleration and deceleration practices of Wikipedia. It is thus important to slow down to unearth these mechanisms that otherwise remain in the background.

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