Liquid Reading – Zygmunt Bauman and the Article Reading Experience

February 26, 2025
AI & Insights, Design & Dev

Written in collaboration with ChatGPT and Perplexity

Listen to this (recorded using my own voice and ElevenLabs)

Why this matters

  • Liquid Life & Content: Bauman’s liquid life—defined by instability—applies to digital content, where rigid articles no longer fit today’s adaptable, AI-driven consumption.
  • Fluid, Adaptive Reading: With only 4% of articles fully read, content must be liquid, adjusting dynamically to user needs, context, and format.
  • Balancing Change & Trust: AI-driven content must stay credible, maintaining solid anchors like ethical journalism to counter misinformation.

I’ve been a big fan of the sociologist and philosopher, Zygmunt Bauman, for a number of years. His concept of a liquid life—the idea that modern life is defined by constant change and impermanence—resonates more than ever in today’s fast-moving world.[¹] He coined the term liquid life to describe how today’s society leaves humanity unmoored and essentially anxious.[²] Bauman’s liquid life describes our transition from stable, structured systems to flexible, ever-changing ones. Without any solid foundation offered to us by institutions that have become irrelevant, ignored, forgotten, and derided, he explored how globalization and technology have deeply reshaped human connections.[³] His insights offer a powerful lens through which we might better understand how we consume and interact with content in the digital world—and perhaps even hint at the future of a “reading” experience.

Bauman’s liquid life helps us make sense of how our relationship with information is shifting. We’ve moved away from a world where institutions, careers, and even identities felt stable, to one where everything—from jobs to personal relationships to digital experiences—is in flux.[⁴]

Per Bauman’s analysis, the traditional article page can be interpreted as a “solid” structure in a world where information needs to be fluid.[⁵] The article page of most digital publishers has become brittle in its experience, and readers are demanding more. With fewer and fewer people reading full articles, my research at DDM showed that only 4% of articles across all our brands were actually read from beginning to end.[⁶] AI-driven content has the potential to make information more engaging and adaptable to the needs of individual readers.

In fact, traditional articles are relics of a solid era: static, unchanging, and controlled by the publisher.[⁷] But in a world where we expect our experiences to adapt—whether it’s Netflix curating our recommendations or ChatGPT answering our queries—this rigidity no longer makes sense.[⁸]

If we apply Bauman’s thinking to content consumption, it becomes clear: information shouldn’t be locked inside immovable pages. Instead, it should be something readers can shape, query, and personalize in real-time. AI-driven tools are already making this possible, dissolving rigid content structures and allowing knowledge to be reconstructed in fluid, dynamic ways.[⁹]

Imagine a future where content doesn’t just sit there waiting to be read—it responds, adapts, and evolves. It is, in fact, liquid, shifting to fit the context, needs, interests, and abilities of the reader.[¹⁰] In a truly liquid reading environment, the rules of the experience might be:

  • Asking questions and receiving instant, synthesized answers instead of skimming through paragraphs.
  • Adjusting the information density based on how much time or cognitive bandwidth you have. Your mobile device knows that you are moving – your content should as well.
  • Seamlessly mixing insights from multiple sources, rather than flipping between articles.
  • Adapting content to your expertise level, skipping what you already know and diving deeper where needed. Infographics and visual data should distill complex ideas instantly and should know how you understand them to adjust accordingly. Readers should be able to manipulate data, compare sources, deep dive on others and engage dynamically. Whether you want a quick summary or a deep dive, content should offer layered levels of information.
  • Multi-modal – moving fluidly between different formats—text, audio, visuals—depending on the context and situation.
  • Social – Content should be conversational, connecting readers with others engaging in the same topics.

This shift acknowledges a fundamental reality: relevance is temporary, and our needs and attention change constantly. Future content experiences must reflect this.[¹⁷]

This is more than an AI chatbot regurgitating information—it’s a recognition that content consumption itself must become fluid.[¹⁸] It must become liquid. It must meet the expectations of a reader accustomed to consuming content at the speed of TikTok.[¹⁹] Yet, the challenge is ensuring this shift doesn’t come at the expense of trust and credibility.

Bauman likely wouldn’t have advocated for total liquefaction. While flexibility is necessary, we also need solid anchors—trusted institutions, vetted facts, and ethical journalism—to keep us from floating aimlessly in a sea of unverified content.[²⁰] Social media and information overload often reinforce cognitive biases, leaving us unmoored and, in many cases, unwell.[²¹] As these content modalities evolve to monopolize attention, it becomes crucial to recognize the solid anchors Bauman spoke of.[²²]

Footnotes

  1. Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Life. Polity Press, 2005.
  2. Ibid.
  3. Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Modernity. Polity Press, 2000.
  4. Ibid.
  5. Ibid.
  6. Internal research at DDM on reader engagement metrics.
  7. Bauman, Zygmunt. Consuming Life. Polity Press, 2007.
  8. Gillespie, Tarleton. Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media. Yale University Press, 2018.
  9. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. MIT Press, 1994.
  10. Rose, Frank. The Art of Immersion: How the Digital Generation Is Remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the Way We Tell Stories. W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.
  11. Google’s AI-driven Search Experience (SGE) and its impact on content retrieval.
  12. Research on adaptive user interfaces: Norman, Donald. The Design of Everyday Things. Basic Books, 2013.
  13. Sunstein, Cass R. Republic.com 2.0. Princeton University Press, 2007.
  14. Mayer, Richard E. Multimedia Learning. Cambridge University Press, 2009.
  15. Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. MIT Press, 1999.
  16. Shirky, Clay. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. Penguin Press, 2008.
  17. Bauman, Liquid Modernity.
  18. Crawford, Kate. Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence. Yale University Press, 2021.
  19. Analysis of content consumption trends: Pew Research Center, “The Future of Digital News,” 2023.
  20. Bauman, Liquid Life.
  21. Pariser, Eli. The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think. Penguin Press, 2011.
  22. Silverman, Craig. Lies, Damn Lies, and Viral Content. Columbia Journalism Review, 2015.

References and more about Zygmunt Bauman;