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: 

• Big Imagination 747 – One Month Progress Report – Big Imagination – YouTube. “This project tried to get to Burning Man last year, failed pretty spectacularly because — who knew–they underestimated the challenges of acquiring a jumbo jet. It’s now underway. It shows the sheer hubris and scale of what has become a controversial festival that’s a wannabe spiritualist hipster boondoggle for some, and the greatest art party on the planet for others. But whichever camp you’re in, the scale of this art car boggles the mind.” (Alistair for Hugh).
• Hyper-Reality - Keiichi Matsuda – Vimeo. “A few years ago I saw a pretty dystopian video of mixed reality by Keiichi Matsuda, where a user’s view was clogged with ads that blocked out the real world in order to earn enough money to boil water. Well, if that was dark, this finished, Kickstarter-backed one is downright terrifying. Here’s what our augmented future might look like if we’re not careful, and it’s so compelling and vivid it’s hard not to believe it’s on its way.” (Alistair for Mitch).
• How I Acted Like A Pundit And Screwed Up On Donald Trump – FiveThirtyEight. “Data whiz any pollster analyst, Nate Silver, underestimated Donald Trump on his site FiveThirtyEight. Here is his mea culpa.” (Hugh for Alistair).
• Never mind the bus pass: punks look back at their wildest days – The Guardian. “When I was a kid in the mid-eighties, I fell in love with punk music and the punk aesthetic from late 70s London. Somehow this article is heartwarming.” (Hugh for Mitch).
• New Digital Face Manipulation Means You Can’t Trust Video Anymore – Singularity Hub. “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. This was a well-used, much loved cartoon that made the rounds – for years – as connectivity and social media took hold. The image to support the text was – simply – a dog typing on a computer. Well, what if you could alter a video of anyone to emulate facial and mouth movements that never existed in the source video — by yourself, at home, using a cheap webcam? Watch the demo below. Now, think about how big of a problem we already have, in a world where most people share, comment and expand on news items that are false and/or satire. Who will be watching for us?” (Mitch for Alistair).
• Great Books for Designers to Read in 2016 - Robin Raszka – Medium. “As a non-designer (in the traditional sense), I find that most of my inspiration and ideation gets sparked by looking, reading, analyzing and thinking even deeper about design. Most of that inspiration comes from books (the Web versions seem somewhat “limiting” – which is surprising). There is something about how these books are designed (imagine that), that truly does inspire. Here’s a whole lot of them… many of which I have just ordered.” (Mitch for Hugh). 

Feel free to share these links and add your picks on Twitter, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.

HYPER-REALITY from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.