Wellsbaum.blog

Writing about life and arts

digital

  • Collecting and craft

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    2 min read

    Friction is the great stabilizer. We need just enough technology to enable creation while constricting our attention to the gusts of other content. The emergence of shiny new apps and devices often throws our work into disarray. Sometimes it’s the basic pen and paper (typewriter, anybody?) is all that’s required to induce focus. The same…

  • ‘Toys are preludes to serious ideas’

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    1 min read

    “Toys are preludes to serious ideas.” Charles and Ray Eames Those shiny toys, they give us all the answers and leave little to the imagination. What could unleash creativity like a blank paper does for a pack of gel pens instead turns off the lite-brite of ideas. Charles and Ray Eames knew about the risks…

  • Digital art by Manolo Gamboa Naon

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    1 min read

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  • The sorcery of screens

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    1 min read

    The internet never ends. Mountains of content are piling up as we speak. The hook is neither in our control or that of technology. We pull the lever, the slot machine spits out a variable reward. It’s impossible to disentangle ourselves from the mindlessness of a ludic loop. With more data, the machine grows smarter…

  • Dave Eggers: Social media is like snack food

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    1 min read

    “It’s not that I’m not social. I’m social enough. But the tools you guys create actually manufacture unnaturally extreme social needs. No one needs the level of contact you’re purveying. It improves nothing. It’s not nourishing. It’s like snack food. You know how they engineer this food? They scientifically determine precisely how much salt and fat they…