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Latest Posts

Nursing Perspectives: What Social Media Wants

Kevin Kelly wants us to undertand what he calls the “technium” and outlines his life’s work in What Technology Wants. I’d like to riff on the way Kelly uses the word “want” with respect to Social Media, and ask: “What does social media want?”

Social Media wants…

  • Your time
  • Your attention
  • Your friends
  • Your brand
  • Your business
  • Your data
  • Your privacy
  • Your publicity
  • Your location
  • Your behaviors
  • Your wants
  • Your life

There’s nothing wrong with “want” in itself – maybe it’s OK that Social Media wants all these things – and more.

The more critical question, rather, is: What do you want?

As the power of technology increases the number of choices we can make, we will have to intensify our awareness of who we are and where we’re headed.

Whatever Social Media wants, what you want determines how much it gets.

@PhilBaumann

*This blog post was originally published at Phil Baumann*

The Quantified Self: Tools For Knowing Your Own Mind And Body

I’ve been a fan of the Quantified Self project for a long time, and now a TED Talk describing their mission just became available:

*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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