Last month Marc Andreessen published a significant essay in the Wall Street Journal, outlining the many ways in which software has become not just important to our world, but the critical guts and infrastructure of it. Andreessen is, of course, pointing out a trend that has been building for some time, which has culminated in a sea change in the world of business that is only beginning to be understood. The perfect example of this change is the news that the iconic HP has chosen to abandon the PC market for software, seeing the former as commoditized and the latter as the future.

Here’s what we’re reading online, this week at Involution, on design, tech, and the digital life, in our links round up.

Visualizing Irene
For those of us on the Eastern seaboard of the United States, last week was quite a ride, starting with Hurricane Irene wrecking havoc all the way from North Carolina to Massachusetts, and continuing with an arduous clean up effort to remove the debris, start repairing the damage, and get back our lives into some sense of normalcy.

The "It's (so-and-so's) birthday" feature on Facebook is simultaneously one of the best and worst examples of how social networks can impact our digital lives. Best, in that it lets us know when something important and personal is happening to people we are connected to, and makes it easy for us to connect with them in that context. Worst, in that it elicits inauthentic responses and reduces the process of responding to such an event to a relatively hollow "Happy birthday!!!!!!" on their wall that shows up among a sea of similar announcements. The true lack of time and care the responders are giving back to that announcement is clearly apparent by the similarity and curtness of their responses. Indeed, while some or even all may truly be having good feelings and a lingering moment for the person they are "celebrating", that does not come across in the sea of short and generic comments.