Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #107

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 (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, iambik, PressBooks, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so 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:

• 11 Months, 3000 pictures and a lot of coffee – YouTube. "Nothing to see here. Just a guy stripping down and rebuilding a motor over nearly a year, taking pictures of each step so he can put it back together properly. Which makes for an amazing film." (Alistair for Hugh).
• The Hidden Economy of Esteem – Cambridge University Press. "It is said that the first treatise on the Gulf Stream began with the sentence ‘There is a river in the ocean’. As there is indeed a river hidden in the tumult of the ocean, so we suggest that there is an economy hidden in the whirl of social life. I’ve been thinking a lot about new economies lately, partly because of the reduced friction from electronic systems that allows them to emerge, and partly because Tim O’Reilly stocked the waters of Foo Camp with folks from Kickstarter, AirBnB and elsewhere to discuss the subject. As I was writing up my thoughts on the event, I came across this piece, published in 2000, by Geoffrey Brennan and Philip Pettit. It’s particularly relevant in a world where we can track not only money, but also attention and reputation, like currency. It’s really dry stuff, more worth skimming than reading, but it does pose some fascinating questions that are much more relevant today than they were before we lived our lives online: is esteem like a pheromone? Or is it more like money? And I love this line, known as the Elster Axiom: ‘nothing is so unimpressive as behavior designed to impress.’ As it turns out, it takes 98 pages to say don’t market like a douchebag." (Alistair for Mitch).
• Cyberwar’s eerie echoes of the A-bomb race – New Scientist. "A couple of weeks ago my link was about the revelation that the computer virus Stuxnet was indeed the creation of the US and Israeli militaries, which signaled an ‘official’ beginning of militarized cyberwarfare (I say ‘official’ because, well, I assume this has been happening for years). This article looks at the parallels between the early days of the nuclear arms race, and the kinds of statements coming out of the US about cyberwar." (Hugh for Alistair).
• Giving it Away: How Free Music Makes More Than Sense – Derek Webb. "We all know the economics of media has gone topsy turvey, and music was the first to go. This is interesting because I spend a lot of my time thinking about what’s going to happen to books. I was talking to David Usher the other day about the music biz, and he said ‘Really, selling music is dead. Live shows are great, but there’s no money to be made in selling albums/downloads anymore.’ Here’s an article by a working musician arguing that there is more value in giving away music than selling it, because if you give it away, and control the contact with the listener – you have something valuable. If you sell it, you make pennies." (Hugh for Mitch).
• The U.N. Declares Internet Access a Human Right – The Atlantic. "How will we keep the citizens of the world informed? I’m not just talking about the latest breaking news that we capture on CNN, but everything from changes at city hall to things happening in your neighborhood? It used to be a lot simpler when people got their news rolled up on the doorstep or at 6 pm on the local news or by listening to the radio on their drive to work. Now, with the disruption of new media and the always on world, there’s no clear place to go to get the information your need. I blogged about this issue nearly two years ago (right here: The Internet As Your Birthright), so in an ‘I told you so!’ moment, I’m happy to see that the U.N. is declaring access to the Internet as a basic human right." (Mitch for Alistair).
• William Faulkner House Gives Peek Into Writer’s Life – The Huffington Post. "I used to have the entire series of The Paris Review‘s book series titled, Writers At Work (in looking at the prices for these books on Amazon, I probably should not have donated them to goodwill!). I’ve always been fascinated with the environment of writers: not just the physical space but where they find inspiration. This article reminded me of how much I enjoyed reading the Writers At Work series when I was much younger (probably not something that many young writers ever did), but a line from this article really struck a chord: ‘You’re going to hear about the agony and the sweat and the difficulty and the compulsion,’ Griffith said. ‘You’re not going to hear anything about how great it was, how relaxing and beautiful it was. None of that. He just did what he had to do to get it done.’ Nothing sums up the stress of writing more than that." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it’s your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.