Categories: Articles

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #285

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:

We need a Data Journalism Archive. Before it becomes just another 404 error. – Vox. “Got a VCR tape? Good luck getting that into a new format, reliably. Our history is digital, and while what we make might be prolific, ensuring it’s readable is a real problem. Simon Rogers (formerly of The Guardian, and now Twitter) knows from archives.” (Alistair for Hugh).
SCARF: a brain-based modeller collaborating with and influencing others – NeuroLeadership Journal. “I’ll take me a heaping spoonful of neuroscience with my corporate culture. With Myers-Briggs heavily relied upon, but also reliably debunked, maybe it’s time to dig a bit deeper into what makes people collaborate well? Turns out it’s five things: Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness. Want people to behave well? Give them this. Probably true of social media in general.” (Alistair for Mitch).
A first look at the hard problem of corrigibility - Intelligent Agent Foundations Forum. “Do you ever wake up and say, ‘Oh my God, AI is going to take over the Earth and turn us into The Matrix,’ … Well, here is some research being done to try to stop AI from doing just that. It is very spooky reading.” (Hugh for Alistair).
Big Data’s Mathematical Mysteries – Quanta Magazine. “Also, by the way, our state-of-the-art AI (such as Google‘s neural network systems) work better than they should: ‘None of the classical results come close to explaining why neural networks and deep learning work as spectacularly well as they do.’ What could possibly go wrong?” (Hugh for Mitch).
5 criticisms of billionaire mega-philanthropy, debunked – Quartz. “I tend to stay away from politically-charged issues. This week, Facebook‘s Mark Zuckerberg (along with his wife and newborn child) pledged to give away 99% of his Facebook shares/wealth. Tons of cynicism, questioning and comments about his real intent behind the move (like, to save on paying taxes and more). I am dumbfounded. Do you know what percentage of our salaries people donate to charities? Read this. Stop and think about it. Even if he’s doing this through a corporation that he controls – and could generate more money with – where is the real issue? So, he’s saving on paying taxes while this money works to increase? He’ll still be doing about thousand percent more than most of us, and giving away more than any one of us could ever hope to. What’s the real downside here (besides our own political agendas or jealousy)?” (Mitch for Alistair).
The Future Of Libraries Is Collaborative, Robotic, And Participatory – Fast Company. “Do libraries have a future? A topic that Hugh and I love to discuss over lunch. The answer, of course is ‘yes!’ The answer, of course, looks nothing like the libraries that we all grew up in. They will be much different… and much cooler… and may not have many books.” (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.