Is there one link, story or idea that stopped you this week… and made you think, “someone else needs to see this”?
My friends: Alistair Croll (Just Evil Enough, Solve for Interesting, Tilt the Windmill, Interesting Bits, HBS, chair of Strata, Startupfest, FWD50, and Scaletechconf; author of Lean Analytics and some other books), Hugh McGuire (Rebus Foundation, PressBooks, LibriVox) and I made a simple pact years ago. Once a week, each of us would share one link with the others… something we genuinely believed the other two had to see. No trend-hunting… no performance. Just six ideas exchanged with intent. What started as a small ritual between curious friends became Six Links That Make You Think.
These are the six links we passed to one another this week… take your time with them…
- The Cathedral, the Bazaar, and the Winchester Mystery House – Drew Breunig. “Eric S. Raymond‘s The Cathedral and the Bazaar is the Old Testament of Open Source software. It argued that traditional, for-profit software was a cathedral, carefully planned and tightly controlled. Open source was more like an open market or bazaar, bustling and chaotic. And now, according to Drew Breunig, there’s a third building: the Winchester Mystery House, a sprawling, never-ending, infinitely customized folly. And what does AI do to all this? ‘Until we figure this out, the bazaar will keep getting louder without getting smarter, and the best ideas in our Mystery Houses will be forgotten once we stop maintaining them’.” (Alistair for Hugh).
- An AI Bot Invited Me To Its Party In Manchester. It Was A Pretty Good Night – Aisha Down – The Guardian. “If the party is good, does it matter who threw it? Maybe not, but the human behind this experiment probably didn’t consent to the catering bill.” (Alistair for Mitch).
- You’ve Never Heard of China’s Greatest Sci-Fi Novel – Afra Wang – Wired. “The Morning Star of Lingao is a collaborative online novel, started in China in 2006, and now running at 9 million words, with hundreds of contributors and millions of readers. It provides an alternate history and a template for the future of China. The novel reimagines the critical mistake of the 1600s: the Ming Dynasty’s failure to embrace technology and global trade, which eventually left the country vulnerable to the west and started the Century of Humiliation. This novel suggest that China will never allow that weakness to return, with a strategic culture now focused on technological advance, industrial scale, trade and discipline.” (Hugh for Alistair).
- What Happened After A Teacher Ditched Screens – Jenny Anderson – The Atlantic. “If I could do a few things over, one of them would be not letting my kids have screens till… much older. And not sending them to a school that requires an iPad.” (Hugh for Alistair).
- Will AI Take Your Job in the Next 10 Years? Wrong Question – Vinciane Beauchene – TED – YouTube. “An interesting business perspective with lots of strategy. And, whether you agree or not, it’s important (for all of us) to listen to as many voices on this topic as possible. And, from my perch, I prefer voices that don’t have any direct financial benefit from a world where AI does everything. So, let the leaders behind the frontier models do what they do… but take several moments to listen to those in the trenches… they might have even more valiue and perspective to add.” (Mitch for Alistair).
- Limiting Not Just Screen Time, But Screen Space – Laura J. Martin – Noema. “There was a time when the internet was a place we visited, something we logged into, explored, and then left behind. Now it’s not just where we are, it’s where we live. Always on. Always within reach. Always pulling at our attention. It’s ambient. And when a tool becomes an environment, something subtle but profound shifts. Our homes feel less private. Our thoughts feel less quiet. Even our sense of self starts to blur at the edges. So maybe the discipline isn’t about disconnecting entirely. Maybe it’s about remembering that this was built to serve us, not absorb us. That our bodies still exist in a physical world that demands care and presence. That attention is something we choose, not something we surrender. The internet is at its best when it remains what it was always meant to be: a powerful tool, not the place we disappear into. Maybe we need more than less screens… more space…” (Mitch for Hugh).
If one of these sticks with you, pass it on… and let us know what earned your attention this week…
Before you go… ThinkersOne is a new way for organizations to buy bite-sized and personalized thought leadership video content (live and recorded) from the best Thinkers in the world. If you’re looking to add excitement and big smarts to your meetings, corporate events, company off-sites, “lunch & learns” and beyond, check it out.
Mitch Joel Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.