Categories: Articles

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #256

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 Crazy Connection Between Color And The Existence of Life – Mitch Kirby. “The colors we see were driven by natural selection. Which happened because of the dangers we were looking out for, and the food we sought. Which has to be certain colors to turn sun into sugars. Turns out the colors we see are pretty specific to the way life occurs. But of course, this begs the question — who’s looking?” (Alistair for Hugh).
Beyond Clueless – Art of the Title. “What if all those teen movies happened in one big, hormonal, angsty universe? The long, slow hallway walk is a common trope in high school films. Here’s what happens when you put them all together.” (Alistair for Mitch).
Tomorrow’s Advance Man – The New Yorker. “Another profile of a brilliant techno mind, this time Marc Andreessen, creator of the first graphic web browser (Mosaic, which became Netscape, which morphed into Firefox), and now venture capitalist at Andreessen Horowitz.” (Hugh for Alistair).
Why every executive team should have a Devil’s Advocate – Financial Post. “Fascinating bit of study about major corporate decision-making. Dan Lovallo Olivier Sibony did an analysis of 1,000 business decisions made over 5 years, and rated the decisions as positive or negative, based on outcomes of revenue, profitability, market share and productivity. They were trying to understand what creates quality decisions. The answer is not analysis, but rather: process. That is, good analysis is a distant second to good process for making good decisions.” (Hugh for Mitch).
Report on self-driving car accidents is in violation of good sense – Mashable. “I was lucky enough to have a test drive in one of Google‘s self-driving cars. It was a wild experience that completely changed my thinking about this technology. In short: the technology can ‘see’ a whole lot better than humans and it removes things like distractions and emotions. Once the drive was over, I was convinced. This happened several years back. I asked one of the Googlers about accidents, and they told me that the only accidents they knew about were caused by humans either trying to taunt the car or because of human error. Turns out that the technology is a lot safer than most people would have assumed.” (Mitch for Alistair).
The Rise of Fast TV: Why Empire Is the Preferred Script Model – Vulture.“Are things getting faster than they used to be? You start feeling like an old man when those kind of thoughts race between your earholes. TV feels a lot faster than it was before. I remember reading somewhere that the scripts for the famed TV drama ER were much longer than most other TV shows of the same length. The writer was trying to push the pace. Well, it turns out that TV shows are, in fact, getting faster. The pace is picking up for all shows… which means much more writing!” (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.