"Images are made in Photoshop and Illustrator. Video is edited in Final Cut Pro. Buildings are rendered in Autodesk. Books are written in Scrivener. And so on. To paraphrase McLuhan “the hardware / software is the message” because while you can imitate as many different styles as you like in your digital arena of choice, ultimately they all end up interrelated by the architecture of the technology itself."

"The Slow Web would be more like a book, retaining many of the elements of the Popular Web, but unhurried, re-considered, additive. Research would no longer be restricted to rapid responders. Conclusions would be intentionally postponed until sufficiently noodled-with. Writers could budget sufficient dream-time before setting pixel to page. Fresh thinking would no longer have to happen in real time." An interesting addition to Robin Sloan's essay Fish.

Greg J. Smith / @serialconsign reviews a book that puts some media theory behind the glitch aesthetic.

"Hatherley is ostensibly a critic in the mode of Reyner Banham: freewheeling, spinning out ideas, theories and evaluations that may have their origin in the stony core of the built environment, but which spread to encompass most other aesthetic realms as well. Aesthetic but in Hatherley’s case also political: for it is the great strength of his writing – as well as its besetting weakness – that he aims for an explicitly politicised critique." Full of fancy words, and sympathetic yet still Self is scathing. It's worth a read, anyway.

'In his "Culture" novels, science fiction author Iain M. Banks describes a civilization that has moved beyond ecological limits. This is a universe in which energy and resources need not be rationed, and in which every aspect of the non-human world can be readily managed. In some important ways, this fictional universe looks like a best-case extension of our present technological trajectory.'

"In the comic books, it took Stark 40 years to make this move. For Superman or Spiderman or Batman or virtually any other superhero from the prior century (save some like the X-Men) their secret identities were their most sacred possessions, the keys to their undoings, and they fought as hard to protect them as to save humanity itself. But in the 21st century, Tony Stark’s approach to privacy reflects how Millennials now think of the concept."

"From Spidey to Batman to Iron Man, comic-book movies are Hollywood's most bankrupt genre. And I say that as a fan. By Matt Zoller Seitz." "If the Hollywood studio assembly line is high school in a John Hughes movie, superhero films are the jocks -- benighted beneficiaries of grade inflation and reflexive fan boosterism."

"I started writing a comment on Chris Messina’s thoughtful post and it expanded into something post-worthy." It is too. Well worth a look.

"I’ve decided that rejecting this product out of hand wouldn’t be fair. As much as I’m itchin’ to. And, well, since I’m trying to be more positive these days, I’ll see if I can be more rational in my constructive criticism." Chris Messina on that mouse: he succeeds in his goal, and the piece is well worth a read.

It's nice to know that other people shared the same disdain for Terminator 2's philosophical core as I did. Don't skip the footnotes, wherein Cameron's other masterpiece (that would be The Terminator (ha, I notice now the titular definite article- take that, pointless sequels), not T2) is discussed.

Comments by Evan Harris; the only one at the time of posting is on the subject of the Simon Singh vs BCA case.

I'd been blissfully unaware of this until this weekend, when the New Scientist and Economist both covered it, but this is perhaps the best summary I've seen of a ridiculous legal ruling on a piece Simon Singh wrote in the Guardian about chiropratic treatments of illnesses in babies.

A history of the song currently exercising the patience of culture vultures in the UK, as TV talent show contestants tackle it. "If Buckley was covering Cale, there's little doubt that almost all of these people were covering Buckley. And no one was really covering Cohen anymore."

Waldemar Januszczak in fine grumpy form on the War Museum's Bond show, although he takes a while to warm up. I don't entirely agree with his conclusion, but I'm rarely bothered about many of the for-pay exhibitions.

Jonathan Meades on "The Endless City", a collection of articles on urbanism. He doesn't like it very much.

iTunes tries to be helpful by unsubscribing you from podcasts you don't get round to listening to, but that's really annoying for digital packrats (hello!), especially when the likes of Radio 4 broadcasts expire after a week.

The catchy-image-as-art is part of the culture of ffffound as much as it is of digg (and it seems to be getting worse over time). The utter lack of text and context don't exactly help either.

A fun romp, especially as everyone seems to hate those awful blocks at Vauxhall.

"It doesn’t tell me what that current location is. It doesn’t tell me what time of day it’s using. It doesn’t move the sky in real time. It doesn’t tell me if the Sun is up or not. It doesn't tell me where the horizon is."

Good article by Clive Thompson on Collision Detection, even if his reasons overlap somewhat.

Lots of stuff about Strange and Norrell, if I ever get time