Categories: Articles

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #308

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:

New Seminar Apps and Long Now Video Archive – The Long Now Foundation. “The Elders of the Internet geek out about something called the Long Now Foundation. They build thousand-year clocks, and worry about humanity at scale. Their talks are legendary, and now they’re all free. I literally plan on binge-watching all of this.” (Alistair for Hugh).
How Music Taste Evolved – Polygraph. “Get your headphones out, Mitch. Every top 5 song from 1958 to 2016, in one place. Some things make you realize this Internet thing might just catch on after all.” (Alistair for Mitch).
Exxon scrambles to contain climate crusade – Politico. “I spent a few years working on climate change issues back in 1998-2003, and I have seen very little evidence that the world wants to do anything about this potentially cataclysmic risk. The Kyoto Protocol (do you remember that one? I do) was signed, ratified, and mostly ignored. I’ve seen no evidence that the recently ballyhooed Paris climate agreement will do any better. But this, this is something different: once the lawyers for big CO2 emitting companies start to worry about financial liabilities for the effects of climate change, once rating agencies and the markets start baking that into their calculus, well, things might change faster than we thought.” (Hugh for Alistair).
9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES9: the mysterious tale terrifying Reddit – The Guardian. “Brilliant. A reddit user started posting comments in reddit threads – except instead of being on-topic, the comments are sections of an utterly creepy scoff story about, among other thing, massive LSD ingestion and ‘flesh interfaces.’ As of today, no one knows who the writer is. But, if you get hooked on the story, as I did, you’ll be checking each morning to see if s/he’s posted something new. This is a brilliant hack of the reddit platform as a channel for long-form fiction (at least, I hope it’s fiction). And the story itself is so creepy/compelling that… well. Read for yourself.” (Hugh for Mitch).
How America’s Most Iconic Design Brand Is Planning Its Next Century – FastCo.Design. “Herman Miller is a fascinating brand. Very high end office furniture. The world is a competitive place. Hyper globalization (think about Alibaba), massive consolidation and, of course, valuations that are off the charts (hello, unicorns and dragons). I wonder how many niche (and respected) brands will attempt what is happening here. This is the classic move from niche to mass. So, what do you think, can Herman Miller become a ‘lifestyle’ brand? Will they be able to pull this off?” (Mitch for Alistair).
Apple’s actual role in podcasting: be careful what you wish for – Marco.org. “There was a well-passed-around feature in The New York Times about Apple and the state of podcasting (see: Podcasts Surge, but Producers Fear Apple Isn’t Listening). Is Apple getting podcasting all wrong? Is Apple responsible for how podcasting will grow and gain in distribution (right now, they really do own that market, though others have tried). Famed programmer and app creator, Marco Arment weighs in. Marco has a dog in this fight, and you should check out his latest adventure, Overcast.” (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.