Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #347

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Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (Solve for InterestingTilt the WindmillHBS; chair of StrataStartupfestPandemonio, and ResolveTO; Author of Lean Analytics and some other books), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik and co-author of Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person “must see”.

Check out these six links that we’re recommending to one another: 

  • Forbrukerinspektørene – NRK TV. “No, that isn’t a typo. Watch this Norwegian talk show. It takes a while for the video to load. Skip to 5:36. Why can’t we all have these please?” (Alistair for Hugh).
  • Asking the wrong questions – Benedict Evans. Benedict Evans has a thoughtful post on how we get the future wrong, and why it’s so hard to see the big trends. I particularly liked this part: ‘Lots of people have pointed out that vintage scifi has plenty of rocketships but all the pilots are men – 1950s society but with robots. Meanwhile, the interstellar liners have paper tickets, that you queue up to buy.'” (Alistair for Mitch).
  • Documentary Now! Season 2 Episode 3 Parker Gail’s Location Is Everything – YouTube. “If you were a certain kind of arty-ish teen in the late 80s or early 90s, you probably watched, and pretended to like (or even legitimately liked), Spalding Gray‘s Swimming to Cambodia, the film of his one man show, directed by Jonathan Demme. I debated whether Alistair or Mitch would be more likely to have liked Cambodia, and settled on Alistair. If I got that right, then this is a kind of spectacular and pitch-perfect send-up of Swimming to Cambodia. If I got that wrong, then, this will be totally baffling, but, well, hopefully some of you out there might have been Swimming to Cambodia fans.” (Hugh for Alistair).
  • John Cage – 4′ 33” Death Metal Cover by Dead Territory – YouTube. “Experimental composer John Cage‘s 4’33” is one one of the world’s most famous abstract music pieces. Mitch is a heavy metal fan. Here’s a death metal version of John Cage’s 4’33”. Make sure you are wearing good earphones for this.” (Hugh for Mitch). 
  • Scientists Find First Observed Evidence That Our Universe May Be a Hologram – Big Think. “There’s a lot on wonky news out there. Most of it is political. Don’t let it divert your attention from the mind-bending science and technology that we’re uncovering, developing and inventing with each passing day. Plus, if you’re stuck in that political spin cycle, it may all just be a hologram anyway…” (Mitch for Alistair).
  • Robot Cars Can Teach Themselves How to Drive in Virtual Worlds – SingularityHub. “That just blew my mind. We’re getting it all wrong, aren’t we? There’s a ton of fear out there that self-driving cars can make mistakes and – even – wind up killing a bunch of human beings as they learn to co-operate and be better than us on the roads. Why didn’t I think of this? Put these cars into virtual worlds and let them run in there until they get it right. Think about how much constant learning can be done. Attention robot cars: go into that virtual world and don’t come out until you’ve got it right!” (Mitch for Hugh).

Feel free to share these links and add your picks on Twitter, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.