Categories: Articles

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #311

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:

Managing the Bots That Are Managing the Business – MIT Sloan Management Review. “Tim O’Reilly is prescient about many things. The convergence of Next:Economy (about the future of work) and Strata (Data Science) make interesting bedfellows, and the subject of bots, algorithms, and automation comes up often. Here, he muses on the people who must manage the bots (and strays into, of course, the bots that will inevitably manage people).” (Alistair for Hugh).
The Delightful Perversity of Québec’s Catholic Swears – Atlas Obscura. “Yeah, we’re from Québec, but readers might not be. So, when they want to get authentic, forget poutine, maple syrup, or Canada Goose jackets: Just start naming things from the Catechism. I’m including this in my folder of ’everything you need to know when visiting Montreal,’ and you should too.” (Alistair for Mitch).
A guy trained a machine to “watch” Blade Runner. Then things got seriously sci-fi. – Vox. “The Twitter link I followed had a better headline, ’Deconstructing Blade Runner using Artificial Intelligence — an AI watches a film about AIs.’ I have not even read the article yet. I can’t wait.” (Hugh for Alistair).
Listen To Wikipedia. “Pull Wikipedia‘s live editing data, convert various editing actions into musical notes (bells are additions, plucked strings are subtractions; the size of the changes defines the pitch). Throw in some graphic representations… and now you have music generated by the humans across the world who are editing Wikipedia.” (Hugh for Mitch).
These 17 life hacks will change the way you use Gmail – Business Insider. “I tend to shy away from these link-bait-ish type of headlines, but I’m becoming increasingly fascinated with how we manage our information. It’s also amazing to see such a vibrant and powerful app and software ecosystem that has been developed around Google‘s Gmail. With that, I just can’t believe all of the amazing things that any one of us can do to make email that much more efficient. Bring on the messaging apps, sure… but I still think email is one of the best ways to get stuff done.” (Mitch for Alistair).
13, right now – Washington Post. “How important is it for a 13 year old to understand the value and power of being an online influencer. Think about it this way: when a 13 year old girl knows that 100 ‘likes’ on any given post of hers is a key metric, we have to start wondering two things: One, what are we doing to kids today and their self esteem? Two, isn’t it great that young kids today know what it means to build an audience and get others to care about their content? Don’t judge those questions… just think about them… and read this.” (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.