Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #312

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: 

• What happened when a professor built a chatbot to be his teaching assistant – The Washington Post. “First, they came for the teaching assistants, but I was not a TA, so I said nothing. Automation won’t happen all at once. The modern job will die by a thousand cuts, as algorithms and machines get specialized first, then coordinate among themselves. This is a good canary for the coal mine.” (Alistair for Hugh).
• Archer Scavenger Hunt 2 – Everything Uncovered So Far! – Imgur. ”The TV show Archer has pushed a lot of limits, but this season’s gigantic treasure hunt may be the biggest push of all. Over the season, the animators have dropped dozens of clues across episodes, tie-in sites, audio, and more. And someone’s made a gigantic infographic of it all. Behold, the future of cross-media engagement. ;)” (Alistair for Mitch).
• Here Is The Powerful Letter The Stanford Victim Read Aloud To Her Attacker – BuzzFeed. “On a host of really painful issues, it seems like we are at a tipping point, driven in large part by the openness of the web, the easy spread of stories, and crucial voices that might not have been heard 5, 10 or certainly 20 years ago. One issue that is bubbling is police violence: it seems six months ago, there was a new video popping up of police abusing or killing someone every week. I guess this was always happening, but all of a sudden it was getting caught on camera, and posted to the web. I would expect that police departments, city officials, and especially their insurance companies have started to say: this is a problem that needs to be addressed. Another issue is sexual violence, where in Canada we had the high profile case of Jian Ghomeshi, who was acquitted in the court, but due to a public statement by one of the alleged victims, he was not acquitted in the public. Here is a similar case, where the victim in a sexual assault case claimed her public space to speak about what happened. The result is damning and painful. The court system is not a friendly place for people who have been sexually assaulted. But, brave women are making their voices heard inside and outside the courts, and surely that must help.” (Hugh for Alistair).
• In the Depths of the Digital Age – The New York Review of Books. “What, really, does it mean to be living when we are always connected, monitored, and occupied?” (Hugh for Mitch). 
• Digital Currency Tech Will as Be Transformative as the Internet – SingularityHUB. “When most people think about digital currency, the immediate/obvious thought is that money (much like everything else) will become a bunch of zeroes and ones (hint: it already is). All money is digital. Your bank is no longer storing your cash in a vault, and you don’t pick up your pay cheque and deposit it, as we once did. In fact, it seems like we’re using pretty archaic and traditional products and services in a world where most money is pretty digital already. And, we’re not just talking about a future where apps are the new banks. Real digital currency is going to be a thing… and it’s going to change the very foundation of our financial institutions. Here’s what some of that might  look like…” (Mitch for Alistair).   
• The Bezos Effect: How Amazon’s Founder Is Reinventing The Washington Post – and What Lessons It Might Hold for the Beleaguered Newspaper Business – Harvard Kennedy School on Media, Politics and Public Policy. “I have vested interest in the future of the newspaper (I sit on the board of directors at Postmedia). It’s easy to swat at these papers for everything that they’re doing wrong, but there are few examples of anybody truly building a successful business model here. While some are seeing better results, none have returned (or exceeded) their past glories. This is problematic on many levels. It’s not just about dead trees and digital distribution. This is truly about an informed public. Look no further than your Facebook feed for a full-on assault of wrong, misquoted and downright lies about people and stories in the news. We need journalism now more than ever. So, why are Silicon Valley’s elite buying newspapers, and what are they doing with them?” (Mitch for Hugh).

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