Categories: Articles

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #130

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:

Solving The Broken Crossword Puzzle Economy – The AWL. "You guys spend a lot of time talking about publishing. But oh, the plight of the crossword creator! Slaving in anonymity, her work sitting on a shelf for years, underpaid, unloved. In this behind-the-scenes post, Ben Tausig shows how the crossword industry is changing forever." (Alistair for Hugh).
A Short Lesson in Perspective – LINDSREDDING.COM. "We live in a world where we pay extra to have someone’s logo on our shirt. Marketing permeates our society; it’s the right hand of capitalism. Before he died, one Linds Redding wrote about the marketing industry. It’s a pretty bleak take on the world. I chose to find this uplifting and inspiring: as we’re flooded with commercial pressures this holiday season, it’s the gleam in my daughter’s eye as she sees blinking lights, the grin on my wife’s face as the streets are dusted with flakes, that matter." (Alistair for Mitch).
Funes, the Memorious – Jorge Luis Borges. "You may well have read this famous story by Jorge Luis Borges, about a young man who remembers everything, not only ‘every leaf on every tree of every wood, but even every one of the times he had perceived or imagined it.’ It’s worth reading again." (Hugh for Alistair).
Ladies and Gentlemen… Mr. Leonard Cohen – NFB. "My wife went to see Leonard Cohen in concert a couple of weeks ago. The 78-year-old put on one of the best concerts she has ever seen (I missed it!). Here’s a NFB documentary from 1965, when Cohen was a 30-year-old poet, famous, but not yet the adored pop star he would become. Great footage of Cohen, and of Montreal in a bygone era." (Hugh for Mitch).
Humanoid robot flexes its 160 muscles for creepy realism – FutureTech. "I’m as fascinated with Internet culture as I have ever been. That being said, I’m eyeing robots and the maker movement like nobody’s business. Take a look at this video. Can you feel it? I think we’ll have robots truly among us much sooner than people expect or realize. Yes, we’re still a ways away, but it’s happening. And I, for one, welcome our robotic overlords!" (Mitch for Alistair).
Making The Impossible Approachable: The Amazing Illustrations Of NASA’s Storyboarder – Fast Company. "This falls into the ‘I never even thought of that!’ category. Imagine if your job was to imagine entire worlds, planets, star systems and more. Not in a science fiction kind of way, but in a way that could best be used to help the mass population visualize something as important as space exploration. This is somebody’s full-time (and serious) gig. This is an amazing piece that looks at the job of Pat Rawlings, a professional space artist. Incredible." (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.

Ladies and Gentlemen… Mr. Leonard Cohen by Donald Brittain & by Don Owen, National Film Board of Canada

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.