Categories: Articles

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #424

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 Interesting, Tilt the Windmill, HBS, chair of Strata, Startupfest, Pandemonio, 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:

Ancient dreams of intelligent machines: 3,000 years of robots – Nature. “Humans have been thinking about automata for centuries. I found this roundup of historical examples fascinating, and food for thought. Today we see AI through twin lenses: the rose color of deity, and the shade of demon. But as this shows, those aren’t the only colours.” (Alistair for Hugh).
This Is My Nerf Blaster, This Is My Gun – Topic. “Decades ago, I equipped my startup with Nerf weapons that fired small rubber donuts, spinning lazily among the cubicles in an almost laughingly stereotypical display out of the episodes of Silicon Valley. Seemed harmless. And then a few weeks ago I watched Adam Savage mod a Nerf gun to give it a magazine that held a thousand rounds, then use it to nail three people in inflatable dinosaur costumes. It got me thinking: Wow, Nerf has come a long way. Apparently I wasn’t the only one wondering that.” (Alistair for Mitch).
Capital of the World – The Nation. “New York really is an extraordinary city, and a new book by Mike Wallace, Greater Gotham, traces the transformation between 1898 and 1919, which includes the 4 years (it would take us longer now!) it took to build the New York City subway.” (Hugh for Alistair).
12% of music industry revenues go to musicians – BoingBoing. “A refresher on how copyright and distribution monopolies work, and not in favor of artists. A nice spin about the rivalry between Big Tech and Big Content being a glitch caused by billionaires hiring different sets of managers to grow their wealth.” (Hugh for Mitch).
Are We at the End of the Future? – Umar Haque – Medium. “A very big and deep question. It feels a little bit like, ‘maybe this is as good as it gets’? Probably not true. The future is always coming. Don’t believe me? Let’s talk tomorrow 😉 If the future still one of hope and dreams? This is a thoughtful piece about the pace of innovation and why we – as humans – pursue it… or should we?” (Mitch for Alistair).
Newsletters Are Immortal – Dave Pell – Medium. “This falls under the ‘do as I say… not as I do.’ For the fifteen-plus years that I have been publishing content, I have not collected any email addresses, and I don’t have a newsletter. I’m looking to fix that. Well, with this piece of writing, I have been pushed. Hard. This is a great article by a wonderful writer and curator of the web. If you don’t subscribe to NextDraft, you really should. Plus, it’s hard not to love Dave Pell, especially when you see his job title: Managing Editor, Internet.” (Mitch for Hugh).

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

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.