Categories: Articles

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #222

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:

The sci-fi optimist – Nature. "Neal Stephenson has had more of an effect on me than any other writer except perhaps, James Burke. He’s brilliant, and unwaveringly tough on himself and others. He’s imaginative, but also grounded in reality. And he writes cool books (the term ‘avatar’, referring to your online persona, was first coined by him in Snow Crash, which in turn inspired Second Life). Case in point: ‘a lot of opposition to global warming and evolution is not about science. The majority of people who identify themselves as global-warming sceptics, for example, do believe it is happening. But they think that admitting that will open the door to excessive regulation by the government.’ Here’s a Nature interview with him." (Alistair for Hugh).
How neuroscience is being used to spread quackery in business and education – The Conversation. "It’s clickbait with an imprimatur of authenticity. Debunking online myths is easy; but when they have the sheen of science, they stick. There’s never been a time when more science is cited – and more of it is wrong – than now." (Alistair for Mitch).
Things Come Apart – Todd McLellan. "The stuff inside of things, made into art. Amazing." (Hugh for Alistair).
‘Pirouetting guard’ breaks decorum to show off dance moves to delighted Buckingham Palace tourists – National Post. "Buckingham Palace guards are famous for doing the exact same thing, every hour, every day for the past, well, anyway for a long time. Here’s the guard who decided to mix things up a bit." (Hugh for Mitch).
Forget The Hyperloop: Larry Page Wants Google To Build A Super-Efficient Airport The Rest Of The World Can Copy – Business Insider. "I spent a few days this week in Phoenix attending the always amazing Google Zeitgeist event. I like to think of this private/invitation-only event as TED with a business slant. This year did not disappoint. Google dreams big. You can read this article to better understand just how big. Adam Grant had the chance to interview Larry Page at Zeitgeist. Page talked a little bit about how he would like to tackle driverless airplanes after driverless cars. He believes that with the technology we’re seeing for drones, there’s no reason why we couldn’t create a more efficient form of air transport. After hearing him speak – and reading this article – I think he’s on to something." (Mitch for Alistair).
How U2 became the new Nickelback – The Daily Dot. "If you’re eyes were open these past few weeks, it was hard to miss the Apple, U2 and iPhone story. In short: Apple decided to give everyone (for free) a copy of the new U2 album. Sounds great and smart, right? Well, it turns out that it wasn’t ‘opt-in.’ The album ‘magically’ appeared on everyone’s playlist and all you had to do was download it from the cloud. The problem? People didn’t want it on their playlists, nor did they want to download it and they felt like Apple intruded on their playlists without permission. Apple retracted and built a webpage to explain to people how to remove U2’s latest. Now, everyone is saying that U2 and Apple are both ‘out of touch.’ Check out this article. It has gotten so bad that they’re now comparing U2 to Nickelback (Hugh, admit it, secretly at night you listen to Nickelback, don’t you?). My two cents: people are looking a gift horse in the mouth and they love to kill their darlings. U2 did something different. They did it with Apple. The execution could have been better, but this was an interesting idea." (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.