Wellsbaum.blog

Writing about life and arts

technology

  • Under the trained eye

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    2 min read

    The eye works as a paintbrush, coloring the world with a palette of vitality. Unfortunately, the constant bombardment of external stimuli torpedoes our attention, bankrupting what’s interesting. After all, the attention merchants plant eye candy and other UX wiles to captivate us and throw us into a ludic loop. But we can see our way…

  • What are you to me?

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    2 min read

    Mirroring reality may be the expectation of technology, but that is not its purpose. Its purpose is to synchronize our real-life identity with our online presence while still differentiating the two worlds.  One shouldn’t have to think about which territory they’re in: digital or physical reality. Actions and reactions should be all the same.  But…

  • Are we still alive?

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    2 min read

    Somewhere upon the way of evolution, humans lucked out. We developed language. And we grew hands and fingers that allowed us to manipulate our environment. But a bigger brain didn’t make us smarter or more conscious than our other animal friends. Neanderthals had larger brains than humans, as too do dolphins and whales to this…

  • Ludic loop

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    2 min read

    In his blog post on breaking phone addiction, Erik Barker uses a quote from NYU marketing and psychology professor Adam Antler to explain why we keep checking our phones again and again. The process is called a “ludic loop.” The “ludic loop” is this idea that when you’re engaged in an addictive experience, like playing slot machines, you…

  • Flashes of intuition

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    1 min read

    When we drop a coin in the dark, our first instinct is to look for the nearest lite brite (be it a streetlight or our phone) to find it. But the initial frustration of blindness provides enough luminosity. We are victims of ignoring the obvious — the coin is often just below our feet. It…

  • Thinking in the cracks

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    1 min read

    We think in the cracks all the time. We fill in the blank spaces throughout our day with either fodder or deliberation. The observer internalizes the outside world to create meaning. Not every thought, of course, is worth marveling. Sometimes thoughts are just thoughts — they are arbitrary with no bearing on reality. Just as…

  • Humans are noticing machines

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    1 min read

    It doesn’t take a lot of effort to become a noticing machine. But it does take practice, exercising the eyes, ears, to stretch the thinking tool that is the human brain. Noticing is an awareness, an alertness that calls to mind what the mind shouldn’t scan over. But the observant person shall not force it.…

  • Coping with ‘the colossal volume of memories’

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    2 min read

    In an interview with the Financial Times, Apple lead designer office Jony Ive points to one of the technological conundrums of our time: balancing ease with excess. “We have such a high-quality camera with us all the time. But it becomes irrelevant if you can’t actually enjoy the photographs you’ve taken. Even 30 years ago…

  • Underground bicycle parking systems in Japan

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    1 min read

    The robotic system, called the Eco Cycle, stores bikes 36 feet underground. It can store 204 bikes at a time. To use it, you need to attach a chip to the front wheel of your bike that links to your Eco Cycle parking account. When you pull up to the Eco Cycle, it will recognize…