1. GitHub is launching a hub for multiple AI coding agents
Developers can soon orchestrate a constellation of AI copilots—from OpenAI’s Codex to Anthropic’s Claude—through a unified “Agent HQ” dashboard, signaling a new era of agentic internet infrastructure that treats models as modular services rather than monolithic products. (theverge.com)
“It’s a mission control for your AI agents.”
2. From elevators to iPhones, the rise of pushbuttons has provoked a century of worries about losing the human touch
Rachel Plotnick unspools the century-long ambivalence toward pushbuttons—from 19th-century panic over mechanized servitude to today’s gesture-driven interfaces—reminding us that buttons are never just technical artifacts but social levers that shape power and agency. (aeon.co)
“Pushing buttons made life too easy, too simplistic, or too rote, when a single finger-action could conjure one’s desires.”
3. How empathy and creativity can re-humanise videoconferencing
Robert O’Toole envisions a future for Zoom and its kin where thoughtfully designed interfaces and empathetic rituals transform sterile grids into shared spaces of warmth, proving that even commoditized tech can—and must—be re-humanized. (aeon.co)
“Sitting in a videoconference is a uniformly crap experience. Instead of corroding our humanity, let’s design tools to enhance it.”
4. Liquid Glass
Apple’s new design language layers every screen with a dynamic “glass” material that refracts light and context alike, melding digital interfaces with the tactile richness of real-world optics—a philosophical nod to coherence across devices in the post-skeuomorphic era. (en.wikipedia.org)
“Liquid Glass features a dynamic ‘material’ that combines the optical properties of glass with a sense of fluidity.”
5. To see how editing shapes our experience of cinema, count the shots in ‘There Will Be Blood’
Through meticulous shot-counting analysis, Evan Puschak reveals how Paul Thomas Anderson’s spare yet deliberate editing choices sculpt our emotional engagement, proving that every cut is a philosophical proposition about attention, duration and narrative weight. (aeon.co)
“By selecting a shot framed in a particular way, or even just lingering on a scene for an extra split-second, editorial choices shape how viewers perceive characters’ mindsets, motivations and relationships.”