tagged digital well being – lucas did this

February 4th 2023
filed under hyperlinks, articles

When a person aspires to be a brand, they forfeit everything that is truly glorious about being human. Building any brand requires consensus. When we position ourselves as a brand, we are forced to project an image of what we believe most people will approve of and admire and buy into. The moment we cater our creativity to popular opinion is the precise moment we lose our freedom and autonomy.

Designer and brand consultant Debbie Millman about The personal brand paradox and how social media (with its followers, likes and click-throughs) is pushing the long-lasting concept of the ‘personal brand’ at the present time.

wepresent.wetransfer.com/stories/personal-brand-paradox-debbie-millman
November 28th 2022
filed under hyperlinks, articles

We cannot make social media good, because it is fundamentally bad, deep in its very structure. All we can do is hope that it withers away, and play our small part in helping abandon it.

According to Ian Bogost from The Atlantic The Age of Social Media Is Ending. Yes, please!

theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/11/twitter-facebook-social-media-decline/672074
July 26th 2022
filed under hyperlinks, articles

Technology is touted as an apolitical, neutral, “objectively” benevolent entity that epitomizes human creativity, innovation and is merely created to improve the quality of human life. […] However, technology like science as a whole is a tool which when created by the capitalist state is a tool of extraction, exploitation, control, repression and subjugation.

Quite a long read, but absolutely worth it: Surveillance Capitalism I: How digital platforms watch, track & control you

wokescientist.substack.com/p/surveillance-capitalism-i-how-digital
July 26th 2022
filed under hyperlinks, articles

I’m a hyperlink maximalist: everything should be a hyperlink, including everything that is hyperlinked by the author, everything that isn’t hyperlinked by the author, and the hyperlinks themselves. Words should be hyperlinked, but so should be every interesting phrase, quote, name, proper noun, paragraph, document, and collection of documents I read.

An interesting thought experiment (or concept idea?) by software engineer Linus about hyperlinks, the backbone of the independent web, published on his wonderful micro-blog.

stream.thesephist.com/updates/1653178568
July 24th 2022
filed under hyperlinks, articles

Today more than ever, there’s just no reason to assume any fit between the demands on your time – all the things you would like to do, or feel you ought to do – and the amount of time available. Thanks to capitalism, technology and human ambition, these demands keep increasing, while your capacities remain largely fixed. It follows that the attempt to “get on top of everything” is doomed. (Indeed, it’s worse than that – the more tasks you get done, the more you’ll generate.)
The upside is that you needn’t berate yourself for failing to do it all, since doing it all is structurally impossible. The only viable solution is to make a shift: from a life spent trying not to neglect anything, to one spent proactively and consciously choosing what to neglect, in favour of what matters most.

This first of Oliver Burkeman’s eight secrets to a (fairly) fulfilled life (“There will always be too much to do – and this realisation is liberating”) might as well be written just for me. I’m going to try and adopt this as a kind of mantra for the future.

theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/sep/04/oliver-burkemans-last-column-the-eight-secrets-to-a-fairly-fulfilled-life
July 3rd 2022
filed under hyperlinks, articles

We can determine what kind of human our technologies can help us become, and build technologies that enable that. In fact, we should directly tie the success of our technologies to how much they enable our humanity (as in, our positive human characteristics), and use this criteria to evaluate past, present and future technologies.

Letters to a Young Technologist is a great online collection of (at the time of writing this) five essays about technology written primarily for soon-to-be technologists:

1. What is Technology? / 2. Value Beyond Instrumentalization / 3. It’s Time to Govern / 4. Study the Past, Create the Future / 5. To be a Technologist is to be Human.

If you’ve followed this blog for a bit already –and noticed the quote above, you are probably able to guess which section I might like the most.

letterstoayoungtechnologist.com
June 30th 2022
filed under hyperlinks, articles

Not long ago, it was the job of human brains. But brains required more: An original idea, a twist, a punchline, a strategy, a journey, a hero. The program humans previously ran on – powered by emotion and imagination and taste and individuality – is now antiquated, rendered obsolete by The Algorithm.

This article about social media and The slow creep of mediocrity by fellow designer Tobias Van Schneider reminds me of an interview with Bo Burnham –I, unfortunately, can’t find anymore– in which he talked about how social media and the high-speed culture of today prevents people from crafting complex art and following through with long-lasting projects. This is very much in line with the initial sentiment this blog is based upon.

vanschneider.com/blog/the-slow-creep-of-mediocrity
June 3rd 2022
filed under hyperlinks, videos, culture and sociology

© ZDF

Was passiert hinter den Kulissen, wenn wir klicken, swipen, bestellen, matchen? Wie funktioniert die neue digitale Welt? Wer zieht hier die Fäden? Wer sind die Gewinner und Verlierer?

German television station ZDF recently started a documentation series about the digital world called Digital Empire. The first episode was about AI and the bias it might come with —based on its originators and their worldview, thus fostering inequality.

An important theme to start with, I’m curious about which topics the team is covering in the upcoming episodes.

zdf.de/dokumentation/digital-empire
May 27th 2022
filed under hyperlinks, articles, design

A friend gave me design advice once. He said to start with left-aligned black text on a white background, and to apply styling only to solve a specific problem. This is good advice. Embrace this, and you embrace Brutalist Web Design. Focus on your content and your visitors will enjoy you and your website. Focus on decoration or tricking your visitors into clicking ads, and your content will suffer, along with your visitors.

Some ideas David Bryant Copeland proposes in his Guidelines for Brutalist Web Design might sound a tad radical, but I do like the general concept, so I’m tempted to follow along.

brutalist-web.design
May 15th 2022
filed under hyperlinks, design, recources and tools

Self-publishing on the internet is a rewarding and powerful experience – you can very quickly produce work that is accessible to billions of people for very low cost.
Building websites is often seen as an uncreative, mathematics-based task undertaken by coders. This library encourages you to learn how to design and build interactive experiences and to consider this a tool in your design toolkit.

If you want to publish something online for the first time, this website is a great starting point. As a matter of fact, even if you’ve been building websites for a while already you might discover one or the other nugget –like the already linked idea of Web Design as Architecture– to pick up.

publishsomethingonline.com
April 26th 2022
filed under hyperlinks

© Google (via YouTube)

Each object has its own communication method, like puffs of air or ambient sounds. Additionally, their simple movements and controls bring them to life and respond to changing surroundings and needs.

Usually I’m not interested in smart home devices –I’m more in line with the sentiment of Internet of Shit, but this Google experiment called Little Signals shows some wonderful fresh and humane solutions for some rather common notification needs.

And the best thing of it all: There are free instructions available to rebuild the technological side of those unusual objects yourself with widely available, affordable parts.

littlesignals.withgoogle.com
April 16th 2022
filed under hyperlinks, videos

© Polyphonic (via YouTube)

It’s absolutely mind-boggling to me that ‘Inside’ by Bo Burnham was released almost a year ago. But the dwindling of time asides;

After seeing the Special multiple times since its release and listening to the songs separately even more often, I still consider it to be one of the most notable pieces of art published in years. Not only is it an accurate reflection of the pandemic reality and the feelings probably most of us had or have to face as a consequence, but beyond that, I consider it to be one of the most spot-on dissections of (current) internet culture the entertainment industry has to offer.

As I have learned through the recently released video essay Bo Burnham, Arcade Fire, and the Infinite Dread of the Internet by Polyphonic, Arcade Fire –who have returned not long ago with a new single from their upcoming album WE, (tbr. in May)– have been criticizing the development plaguing the world wide web years ago, as well. Guess it’s time to give their albums ‘Reflector’ (2013) and ‘Everything Now’ (2017) a more considerate listening (again).

youtube.com/c/Polyphonic
February 10th 2022
filed under hyperlinks, videos, websites

Made to Measure is an experiment that asks if you can reconstruct a person based solely on their digital data trail. Can you build a doppelganger of a person you don’t even know? Record, recreate, and replay the life of someone and their personality in detail?
[…]
Take an hour of your time and join us in the world of digital trails. How close will we get to the person behind the data?

How much does five years’ worth of personal Google data consisting of more than 100 000 data points reveal about the life of a person?

Using the online data¹ from an anonymous volunteer, the Laokoon group worked together with data analysts to reconstruct this person based solely on their digital trail. The result of the experiment is shown in an intriguing documentary called Made to Measure which is available through the dedicated project website —alongside different media libraries.

¹ the data Google is legally required to release according to EU laws

madetomeasure.online