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Six Links Worthy of Your Attention #509

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:

The Internet’s Original Sin – The Atlantic. “Somewhere along the way, we decided everything should be free. This article is from 2014 (most stuff in my feeds and browser history is about politics, diseases, or both, so I’m digging into the wayback machine here.) As Jeff Jarvis says, advertising is failure. It means you failed to get a subscriber or sell a thing. Ads have a perverse incentive—get clicks, which means you have to trigger outrage or tribalism. If I’m hopeful of current times, it’s because, like a forest fire, collective action thins the canopy of selfishness so new things can grow.” (Alistair for Hugh).
Musicians Algorithmically Generate Every Possible Melody, Release Them to Public Domain – Vice. “Fight fire with fire. Fight trolls with algorithms. Rather than forcing composers to tiptoe around accidentally re-using a melody, these computer scientists (and musicians!) generated 300,000 melodies a second, saved the results to a hard drive, and then put it in the public domain. It’s amazing what we can accomplish when nobody cares who gets credit. I imagine there are some good basslines in here too. ;-)” (Alistair for Mitch).
‘Astounding new finds’ suggest ancient empire may be hiding in plain sight – Science. “I love these articles about discovering the scale of Mayan cities.” (Hugh for Alistair).
The lost art of deep listening: Choose an album. Lose the phone. Close your eyes. – Los Angeles Times. “Relaxing ain’t easy these days. So, get yourself some good earphones, and your favourite album from when you were 17 years old, put your phone out of reach, and just listen to the whole thing.” (Hugh for Mitch).
On Confinement – The Book of Life. “How are we holding up? Locked up in our houses. Kids with no classes, maybe some via tech and lots of mindless screen time. We’re trying (desperately) to think about anything else other than the virus. What a strange few weeks (for some, months) this has been. How we handle the time alone will speak loudly to who we are as real people. Take a read. Get comfy.” (Mitch for Alistair).
My Failed Attempts To Hoard Anything At All – The New Yorker. “One of my favorite writers in the world, David Sedaris, just published his latest essay. It’s about hoarding. Or how not to hoard like he does (which is to say that he’s not good at it – at all). And, after reading this article, you kinda hope that all humans would be equally bad at it. It might make everyone’s life easier.” (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.