The Hummingbeez

The unfiltered raw versus the refined smooth: what do we lose when everything looks beautiful?

Some of the most beautiful photographs are not technically perfect.

A laugh caught mid-sentence. Wind-blown hair. A table left slightly messy after dinner. Someone looking away from the camera because they were too busy living the moment. Printed photographs have a tenderness that digital images often lack: they do not ask to be optimised. They preserve evidence that we were there.

Then came the digital version of ourselves: happier, smoother, more productive, more travelled and more aesthetically arranged. Social media did not invent performance. Human beings have always cared about status, beauty and belonging. But it gave performance a permanent stage, a global audience and an algorithm that rarely rewards an ordinary Tuesday.

The scale is difficult to ignore. In 2024, approximately 5.17 billion people used social media more than 60 percent of the global population. Users spent an average of about two hours and 23 minutes a day on social platforms, with significant variation by country and age group. These figures describe more than a communications trend. They show how deeply digital platforms have entered ordinary social life. DataReportal

The pressure is especially visible among young people. In the United States, 95 percent of teenagers reported access to a smartphone in 2023, while nearly half said they were online “almost constantly.” The U.S. Surgeon General has warned that adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media may face approximately double the risk of mental-health problems, although the evidence remains complex and does not establish a single cause for every individual experience. Pew Research Center; U.S. Surgeon General

The problem is not happiness. We need more genuine joy, not less. The problem begins when positivity becomes compulsory: when sadness looks like failure, rest looks like laziness and an imperfect life becomes something to hide.

The digital self is not necessarily false. It is selective. We choose the photograph, the caption, the angle, the timing and the version of the story that can survive public viewing. The difficulty begins when the selected self becomes the only self we recognise. We start performing not only for other people, but for the imagined audience inside our own minds.

This is why Meta’s recent settlement with nearly all U.S. states feels culturally significant. Meta agreed to pay up to $18 billion and introduce new restrictions for teenage users of Facebook and Instagram to resolve allegations that its products were designed to be addictive and harmed children. Meta denied wrongdoing. A settlement does not explain every individual experience online, but it acknowledges something important: digital design is not neutral. The way platforms capture and hold our attention can shape how we see ourselves. Reuters

From the perfect profile to the perfect paragraph

A few years ago, the conversation around AI was still binary: AI or non-AI? Helpful or dishonest? Impressive, yet occasionally wildly inaccurate?

Early generative AI could sound confident yet it still can be factually wrong like a-specific-president-in-US-history-we-well-know. It produced the kind of polished answer that made you think, This sounds right, which is not the same as This is right. Now AI has moved into everyday workflows. It helps us research, structure, translate, summarise, brainstorm and move faster.

That is genuinely useful. I use it too. The question is not whether we should return to a pre-AI world; that ship has sailed, probably with a very efficient autopilot.

The more important question is whether efficiency will make every voice sound the same.

The distinction between AI and non-AI writing is not simply whether a machine was involved. It is a question of tone, intention and presence, sources used to be up to 2020, lots of “dash” and “while”. Human writing often carries traces of a particular life: a strange comparison, a cultural reference, a hesitation, a sharp opinion, a sentence that changes direction because the writer is thinking rather than merely assembling. AI can imitate these qualities, but imitation is not the same as origin.

A perfectly formatted paragraph is not automatically meaningful. A flawless résumé does not reveal character. A beautifully edited image does not tell us whether someone feels lonely after posting it. An AI-assisted piece of writing still needs a human fingerprint: lived experience, judgment, contradiction, humour, context and perhaps one slightly imperfect sentence that could only belong to its writer.

This matters especially in creative and editorial work. A writer and an editor can be combined into one cost-effective, all-in-one service when the goal is speed and efficiency. But if the goal is excellence, the workflow should be improved, not eliminated. Strategy, research, drafting, editing and final judgment are different forms of work. AI can support each stage, but it should not flatten them into one automated process.

The same principle applies to identity. A digital profile can be edited, but a person cannot be reduced to a profile. A generated voice can be smooth, but smoothness is not authenticity. The most valuable communication may be the kind that retains a little friction: a recognisable rhythm, a point of view, a memory, a limitation or an unexpected emotional truth.

Technology can help us say things faster. It should not quietly decide what is worth saying or what a human voice is supposed to sound like.

Globalisation: the bridge and the uneven crossing

This makes me think about globalisation too.

Globalisation did not begin in the 1980s. Trade routes, migration, conquest and cultural exchange are far older than that. But the late twentieth century brought a new acceleration through trade liberalisation, technology, global supply chains and financial integration. The pace intensified further from the 1990s onward. OECD

There is something deeply hopeful in the globalist idea: more exchange, more cooperation and more chances to learn beyond the borders of one’s birthplace. One planet, many stories. As someone who has lived between cultures, I still believe in the magic of that bridge.

Yet bridges are only beautiful when people can cross them fairly.

The freedom to move is not experienced equally. Passports, race, class, language, colonial history and economic power still shape who can travel easily, whose expertise is recognised and who is asked to prove their worth twice. Globalisation connected markets at extraordinary speed, but it did not distribute dignity, security or opportunity equally.

The globalist identity can therefore feel both liberating and unsettling. It offers belonging beyond the nation: a shared language of ideas, work, culture and possibility. But it can also appear detached from local realities. For some people, globalisation means opportunity and mobility. For others, it means insecure work, cultural displacement, economic competition or the feeling that decisions are being made far away by people who do not understand their lives.

This helps explain the appeal of the opposite identity: the localist, nationalist or anti-globalist position. It promises rootedness, protection and a return to a community that feels tangible. It says that identity should not be dissolved into an abstract global marketplace. That concern should not be dismissed simply because it is sometimes expressed through exclusion or fear. People need continuity, recognition and a sense that their home still belongs to them.

But rootedness can become a refusal to listen, just as globalism can become a refusal to notice who is being left behind. The choice should not be between a borderless world with no memory and a closed world with no curiosity. A more mature identity might be both rooted and open: attached to a place without treating other places as threats; proud of a culture without pretending it developed in isolation.

So we should be careful with the phrase “a flat world.” The world may be more connected, but it is not flat for everyone. The task is not to reject connection. It is to make connection less extractive, less superficial and more humane.

AI sits at the same crossroads. It may bring better tools for healthcare, education, scientific discovery and climate solutions. Bill Gates has described AI as a technology with transformative potential in these areas, while also warning that its benefits must reach those who need them most. Gates

But potential is not policy. A technology becomes an equaliser only when access, accountability and human judgment are built into it.

The question is also cultural: whose language will AI understand, whose history will it reproduce and whose definition of intelligence will it privilege? If the systems are trained primarily on dominant languages, institutions and assumptions, they may make the world more efficient while making it less diverse. Global connection should not mean that every culture is translated into the same tone.

People have always moved toward possibility

History is full of people moving toward the next possibility: a safer shore, a new market, an intellectual community or a city where their ideas might finally make sense.

In 1773, the United States did not yet exist. There were thirteen British colonies, increasingly frustrated by imperial control and taxation without representation. The Boston Tea Party became one visible act of resistance; independence came later, in 1776. Thomas Jefferson was the principal drafter of the Declaration of Independence, while George Washington led the Continental Army. Library of Congress

It is a powerful story of liberty, but also an unfinished one. The new republic spoke of equality while slavery endured and Indigenous people were dispossessed. This is the uncomfortable lesson of progress: a society can move forward while still leaving people behind. We should be able to hold both truths at once.

Paris carries a different version of that movement. Louis XIV strengthened France’s cultural institutions and attached artistic prestige to national power. Later, nineteenth-century Paris became an international art capital, drawing painters, sculptors and architects from around the world. The Metropolitan Museum of Art

But cultural centres are never permanent property. Paris did not remain the only centre of gravity. New York rose strongly after the Second World War, and today creativity travels through many cities, languages and digital communities at once.

A side note, Statue of Liberty obviously means a lot to the US, but also for France whereby they both have situated in its iconic city – NY and Paris.

Perhaps the future will not have one “next Paris.” Perhaps it will be more polycentric: a network of places where talent, safety, curiosity, investment and openness meet. The decisive question will not be which city wins, but whether people are free enough to contribute without first becoming a perfect version of themselves or translating themselves into the dominant global style.

The most meaningful progress may be simpler than we think: technology that helps rather than pressures; global connection that does not erase difference; local belonging that does not become exclusion; and enough confidence to keep a few photographs unfiltered.

Not because imperfection is fashionable, but because it is where real life still breathes.

Authenticity is not the opposite of technology, globalisation or ambition. It is the human judgment that gives them direction. We can use digital tools without becoming entirely digital. We can participate in global culture without abandoning local identity. We can use AI without surrendering our voice.

The future should not ask us to choose between being connected and being real.

It should help us become more fully both – the fullest higher potential of our fortunate existance xxx

References

DataReportal. (2024). Digital 2024: Global overview report. https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2024-global-overview-report

Gates, B. (2023, March 21). The age of AI has begun. Gates Notes. https://www.gatesnotes.com/the-age-of-ai-has-begun

Huwart, J.-Y., & Verdier, L. (2013). Economic globalisation: Origins and consequences. OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264111905-en

Library of Congress. (n.d.). The colonies move toward open rebellion, 1773 to 1774. https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/american-revolution-1763-1783/colonies-rebellion-1773-1774/

Novak Jones, D., Stempel, J., & Bensinger, G. (2026, August 26). Meta agrees to pay $18 billion to settle U.S. lawsuits over children’s social media addiction. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/business/meta-reaches-18-billion-settlements-over-childrens-social-media-addiction-2026-08-26/

Pew Research Center. (2024, December 12). Teens, social media and technology 2024. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2024/12/12/teens-social-media-and-technology-2024/

U.S. Surgeon General. (2023). Social media and youth mental health: The U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory. https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/priorities/youth-mental-health/social-media/index.html

Weinberg, H. B. (2006). Americans in Paris, 1860–1900. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2006/americans-in-paris