Hatherly magisterially takes parametricism as practiced/trumpeted by ZHA to pieces, in a zillion words...yet stops weirdly short of making the final (and, I would argue, obvious) connection between it and neoliberal practices like e.g. HFT.

This is so fucking stupid I don't even know where to start.

"Predictable, yeah that's the word of the year..."

Larfs.

Yes.

Predictive analytics. Oh joy.

Interesting primarily for the metaphor bleed (excuse me: "exaptation") from the NFL to the conduct of warfare.

God, this all smells so depressingly familiar. A refreshingly skeptical - almost arch - tone in this business reporting from the Times, which refuses to take Stringer's bromides at face value.

Delicious.

Utterly fascinating, if you can get through the thicket of jargon and geekspeak: a vivid and pungent cautionary tale about the cloud.

Ow, all that smartness smarts. It's amazing how the selfsame rhetoric of urban computing I use to argue for more citizen control is deployed here to support more top-down surveillance and management (and more contracts for IBM).

Whoah - teeth from New York Magazine? Whodathunkit.

A really, really good list of books here - seminal, important stuff. (Not sure what that one by that Greenfield chap is doing there, but they can't *all* be classics.)

Like shooting fish in a barrel, I know. Still. I LOL'd.

The smug, tone-deaf arrogance (and serene self-assurance) of Aso remind me greatly of my old bosses at Dentsu, who clearly suffered from Dunning-Kruger. Via gen.

IRL blowback.

A truly pervasive privatized urban infrastructure management concern. If you live in a big city in Asia, North America or Europe, your life is touched by Veolia and you probably don't know it. Disturbing in so many ways, however efficient or competent.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Fuck you in the eye, John Yoo.

Microsoft's vision for 2019: Clean, attractive people in clean, attractive environments using clean, attractive interfaces. Aspirational much?

MS and Intel slowly wanked by the NYT. Pathetic.

Devastating, even if it does occasionally overplay its hand. Good for a few actual laughs-out-loud, though. Via Anne.

Always worth repeating. As is the related finding that Jerry Pournelle (some of whose tripe I absorbed between the ages of 11 and 15) really is a champion douchelord. Fuck you, Jerry, wherever you are.

If anything, not worded strongly enough. The Emirates may have met their Kunstler.

Liz may have gotten over her rage, but I haven't. Who thought this fucking video was a good idea? Me and my combat boots would like to have a quick word with you.

Alex was kind enough to pick up my Palin piece for Worldchanging.

"The current relationship between street light and its environment is static and one-dimensional. Similarly, the user/service relationship is characterised by a lack of interaction and imagination. By releasing street lights from their rigid position, they are given the freedom and flexibility to interact with their surroundings and users in new ways." Primarily by bouncing ads off their retinae.

Quoted for truth. But I thought *Twitter* was "the platform of choice for the web's least interesting narcissists - and the slow-witted woodland creatures who enjoy grooming their fur."

The life and times of Nathan Barley. A trifle dated, but tasty nonetheless.

Somebody tell me this is an elaborate joke. Please. For the sake of my city.

Mission Accomplished; we can now power down the Intarwebs. This may even trump Kasparov's dildocopter.

I fully endorse campaigns of sabotage and vandalism where such things are concerned.

Via Cheathco. It was only a matter of time...

I rarely read this guy, or development blogs at all, but this is good. Via migurski.

"How long until we...pay a premium for connectivity which comes 'snoop-free'?": My argument about the much more important digital divide - i.e. the inverse of the one everyone thinks is problematic - made concrete. Via preoccupations.