Categories: Articles

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #239

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 Toxoplasma Of Rage – Slate Star Codex. “We get pretty angry these days. There’s a good reason groups seize on extreme, polarizing controversies: ‘If campaigners against police brutality and racism were extremely responsible, and stuck to perfectly settled cases like Eric Garner, everybody would agree with them but nobody would talk about it. If instead they bring up a very controversial case like Michael Brown, everybody will talk about it, but they will catalyze their own opposition and make people start supporting the police more just to spite them. More foot-shooting.” Brilliant, true, and sad.” (Alistair for Hugh).
We Know How You Feel – The New Yorker. “I’d been wanting to get Rana, the founder of Affective, to Strata for a couple of years. She finally took the stage last fall in New York, and it was an amazing presentation. The implications of computers that can measure emotion are incredible — and everyone wants a piece of them, from advertisers to interrogators to toy designers to creators of adult content. This deep, chewy New Yorker article is worth reading at least five times, carefully, if you want to understand the next decade.” (Alistair for Mitch).
Dying Light Parkour – Ampisound. “Bad news all over the place this week. Here’s some… distraction. I got dizzy watching this. And, if the zombies come, I am going to have a hard time.” (Hugh for Alistair).
George Mason University Green Machine Plays Rage – Thomas Block. “A marching band. Rage Against The Machine. Bring it.” (Hugh for Mitch).
What Has Us Interested at Homebrew… – Homebrew. “When you’re in venture capital, you get to see a lot of business/startup ideas. When you’re doing venture capital in Silicon Valley, you’re able to get a peek into the future. A lot of these VC companies invest in specific types of technology. Homebrew is one of them. But, here’s the thing: because they see so much, they also have an eye for what they would like to see. In fact, they don’t just have an eye for it, but they keep a list of technologies that they are waiting for startups/companies to create. That list is secret. It’s private. Well, no more…” (Mitch for Alistair).
Among The Disrupted – The New York Times. “This is some heavy reading. It’s not as dystopian as you might think, after an initial read. We often talk about disruption as, ‘it is what it is… and there’s not much anyone can do about it.’ But, have we paused to think about what it has done to the creative process and… ultimately… what the output of that means to our culture? Are we cultivating the next Moby Dick from our writers or is it an improbability in the face of 140 characters?” (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.