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Six Links Worthy of Your Attention #490

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, FWD50, and Scaletechconf; author of Lean Analytics and some other books), Hugh McGuire (Rebus Foundation, PressBooks, LibriVox) 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:

Year 1999 AD – A/V Geeks – YouTube. “The future is hard to get right. Those AT&T ‘You Will’ ads from the eighties with Tom Selleck were interesting, but completely missed the advent of the smartphone. But this film from 1967 was way earlier—and got a lot of things right. While the computers might be laughably big, they did pretty well—although they didn’t get into the dystopian consequences of filter bubbles, or the vulnerability that liberal democracies have to automated disinformation. But hey, they have six-wheeled cars and online shopping! And then the household computer starts nagging them to exercise when the bed says they’re heavy, and you realize it’s not that great after all.” (Alistair for Hugh).
A roundtable on the platforms, speech, and… 👀 – Columbia Journalism Review. “Here’s a fascinating transcript from the Columbia Journalism Review featuring Canada’s very own Mathew Ingram and friends. It’s an excellent roundup of the state of journalism in an era of social platforms. Jonathan Zittrain is here, too, with some classically provocative suggestions: ‘having American high school students, for a grade and under guidance of their teachers, make the calls’ on questionable content. Long read, but well worth it to see what some of the smartest people thinking about information and journalism have to say.” (Alistair for Mitch).
Daylighting Melbourne: how we can transform our cities, street by street – Dark Matter & Trojan Horses – Medium. “Been a while since I posted a link from the delightful Dan Hill, who writes about how we can make cities better for people.” (Hugh for Alistair).
Testing 9 New Mini Cheetahs – Biomimetics MIT – YouTube. “Our robot overlords might be smaller than we thought.” (Hugh for Mitch).
The Weirdness Is Coming – New York Magazine. “Time to head over to your local magazine store and pick up the latest issue of New York Magazine. This is a piece from their The Future Issue, which is always chock full of articles about technology and what’s next. These types of issues still resonate with me. Spending some serious time with physical paper thinking about how to decode the future is my jam. If this article is any indication of the issue’s quality, it should be a great few days of scouring the pages and taking lots of notes. I hope it is for you as well.” (Mitch for Alistair).
The Life Cycle of a Library Book – Book Riot. “I didn’t know that the dumpster is often the final resting place for library books. Did you? I have a deep love and appreciation for the library (no matter how digital I am). This article is a fascinating view into how library books wind up on the shelf, and their ultimate fate. If you think you know the story, Dear Reader, I challenge you to take a read. From there, figure out a way to get more involved in your local community’s library. Sidebar: my local library is having a book sale this weekend. I can’t wait to check it out.” (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.