Wellsbaum.blog

Writing about life and arts

Tag: tech

  • Missing the details

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    Wells Baum

    How fantastically great and rare it is to immerse ourselves in something (a job, a concert, our art) that removes the friction of anxiety and doubt? The plethora of digital choice impedes the aura of experience and human connection. With so much stimuli, it’s easy to miss the pleasures of a laughing flower, the beauty…

  • The Truman Show Delusion

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    Wells Baum

    Some people believe that all reality is one big TV show and they’re the star. Others seem to think that the world is simulated and that their life has always been lived on a predetermined stage. But are we that special? Your fingerprints are uniquely yours. So is your Twitter microphone. But in the age…

  • “Real journalism matters”

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    Wells Baum

    The medium is the message. And while some of those media messages may stick, most lack substance. Look closely. “Real journalism matters.” Pics via Columbia Journalism Review. (h/t @nudd)

  • The lost desire to pick up your phone 👋📵

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    Wells Baum

    We invented the telephone out of the desire to communicate. We developed the internet to increase connectivity and expand our reach. Thomas Friedman summed up the borderless Earth by writing The World Is Flat. The facilitation of immediacy through text and social media killed the telephone ring. According to a recent Atlantic article from Alexis…

  • Slow media in, Zombie scrolling out

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    Wells Baum
    in

    The tranquil flood of information died after CNN introduced the 24-hour news cycle. But the internet brushed on a new type of disorder onto the information canvass that prevents us from thinking straight. We consumed mindlessly, eating more than we could chew. Our brains got overloaded, dulled out, memories stymied by Google and images that…

  • Technology spreads unreality

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    Wells Baum

    The reason we’re so comfortable around friends is because we can strip away the plastic and can be ourselves, zits and all. The problem with social media is that while it allows for the perfected self, it also undermines reality. Juxtaposing our screen lives and raw selves can make us feel fraudulent. Technology spreads unreality.…

  • The sorcery of screens

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    Wells Baum

    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…

  • Why sitting is bad for you, animated

    Why sitting is bad for you, animated

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    Wells Baum
    in

    Sitting is the new smoking. While that claim may be a bit exaggerated, it is an effective reminder to remind ourselves to take our body for a walk. The more than 360 joints inside our bodies are also ample evidence that we are built to stand up and move. And while more offices are including…

  • ORCAA, a logo to certify organic algorithms

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    Wells Baum

    “The internet is a propaganda machine,” writes author Cathy O’Neil in her book Weapons of Math Destruction where she criticizes the algorithms which have come to disrupt society and politics. Her latest project ORCAA, O’Neil Risk Consulting and Algorithmic Auditing, offers services to companies that promise to maintain a more honest algorithm that unlike Facebook, doesn’t sacrifice…

  • How social media fuels fantasies of the ideal self

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    Wells Baum

    Social media is the story we want to tell about ourselves. It is the edited self. The problem occurs when that ideal self fails to match up with the real one. Can we live up to the image and credentials minted in our LinkedIn profile? Fake it until you make it? We paint our social…

  • When sharing is forgetting

    When sharing is forgetting

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    Wells Baum

    We are not only taking too many photographs and spending little time looking at them, but we’re also inhibiting in our memory in the act. In a recent study done by the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, those who document and Instagram their images are consistently less likely to remember their experience compared to the…

  • Is flying the last escape in our constantly connected world? ✈️

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    Wells Baum

    Soon enough the good old days of shoddy airplane wifi will be behind us. The airplane seems to be the only place — the antithesis of the coffee shop — where we have no choice but to disconnect. The internet is either too expensive or too slow to bother using. And it’s within this big…