David Pringle at a website devoted to the work of J.G. Ballard put up a list of the books Ballard read up until age 26. Pretty neat.

And did you hear? It’s official. Commercial art’s primary purpose is to collect data on you. Or at least that’s what Gawker is reporting about Jay-Z’s new album, Magna Carta Holy Grail. “It is not so much an album as a co-branded multimedia content delivery platform, Presented By Samsung™ Galaxy™ . . . . But now another, more unsettling use for the new album has become clear: It’s a massive data-mining operation. Fans used to obsess over album liner notes; now they freak out about terms-of-service.” Art used to be something we put in archives, museums, and libraries. Now it invades our home and puts us in archives. This is hyperarchival realism. Welcome to contemporaneity.