Categories: Articles

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #169

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, Solve For Interesting, the author of Complete Web Monitoring, Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks and Lean Analytics), 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:

Blinded By False Redemption – Fritz Nelson. "My friend, Fritz Nelson, wrote this recently. It’s just a good read; nothing clever or geeky. People don’t write enough stuff like this." (Alistair for Hugh).
“How can they be so good?”: The strange story of Skype – Ars Technica. "An amazing write-up of the life and times of Skype‘s founders. This reads like a roaring adventure tale." (Alistair for Mitch).
The 100 Rules for Being an Entrepreneur – The Altucher Confidential. "Great list from the great James Altucher (one of my favorite writers on the Web)." (Hugh for Alistair).
Where 500 Retweets Can Win You 3 Years in Prison – Bloomberg. "New twist on ways governments deal with the Internet. This one from China. In the West, we just let the NSA read everything." (Hugh for Mitch).
Glass Just Two Atoms Thick Shatters World Record – Futurity. "Every week, there is another amazing news item like this. Something that really makes you stop dead in your tracks. We think about technology in terms of what Facebook is doing or how fast the next iPhone will be. We’re all wrong. This is the true stuff of innovation. Do yourself a favor: Read this article, grab a notebook and spend one minute listing off all of the incredible things that can happen when glass becomes like this. Here’s my guess: you’re probably not even seeing a fraction of the possibilities. That’s true innovation… and a true sense of just how amazing the coming years are going to be, in terms of technological discoveries that will, hopefully, make us more interesting and smarter humans." (Mitch for Alistair).
What Is Creativity? Cultural Icons on What Ideation Is and How It Works – Brain Pickings. "This is just one big ‘wow!’ If you’re at all interested in creativity and what some of the greats think about where ideas come from and how it works, then this is one massive, meaty piece. Pack a lunch for this one. It’s long, deep and heady. I’ve had it opened as a tab in my browser for this entire week. I keep going back to it. Thinking about it. Taking notes on it. When was the last time a piece of Web content had that kind of longevity? It’s truly a fascinating topic: what is creativity? Why are we creative? Why are we drawn to things that are creative? Like I said… wow!" (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.

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.