Categories: Articles

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #317

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:

How Not To Network: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet – First Monday. “Did you know the Russians were building an Internet? It didn’t turn out as well as they hoped, obviously. Here’s an excerpt, by way of the always fascinating Simon St. Laurent. It’s just a prologue for the book, but it made me wonder why I hadn’t asked the question: what happened to the Internet’s competitors? ‘Between the late 1950s and the late 1980s, a small group of leading Soviet scientists and administrators tried to develop a nationwide computer network that was designed for citizen communication and sweeping social benefits.'” (Alistair for Hugh).
Geopolitical Hedging as a Service – Jon Bruner – Quantified. “I last mentioned Jon Bruner way back in 2012 (Six Links #89). He built something recently to demonstrate how the world’s online maps adjust based on what country you’re in. This is a big deal, politically, because companies like Google and Microsoft have to deal with governments, many of whom have disputed borders. If you ever need a concrete example of how Internet ‘facts’ are fungible, this one’s great.” (Alistair for Mitch).
VentuSky. “The last time I spoke with Alistair, he told me about his interest in big data, climate change, and finding ways to help people understand the impacts – current and potential. This isn’t quite the same thing, but it shows the power of weather data, visualized in a compelling way. It’s a global visualization model of… everything that is going on in the weather today. You can see the whole world, or zero in on where you are right now.” (Hugh for Alistair).
Why The EU Had It Coming – The New York Times. “The Brexit vote in the UK has everyone nervous, everywhere. Was it a vote against immigrants and openness? Or, a vote against a broken system? Tim Parks argues that the EU is broken, and Brexit might be the kick that forces the EU (and the EC) to reform.” (Hugh for Mitch).
Radical new economic system will emerge from collapse of capitalism – The Guardian. “We have seen many pieces of content on the end of capitalism as we know it. Is this another one of those, or a slight more powerful perspective on how we can continue our economy while balancing the needs of the many (beyond the one percent)? This is going to be a very delicate conversation to have. On one hand, we all want equality and more equalized distribution of wealth and power in our world. On the other hand, will those who hold the keys, purse strings, and more be willing to let this happen? Do they have a say or choice?” (Mitch for Alistair).
How technology disrupted the truth – The Guardian. “Everyone freaked out this week. Pokemon Go came out and there were security concerns about what kind of data the game was both capturing and distributing. Once the uproar happened, there was a swift response. Problem solves, right? Wrong. The problem? More people shared the news about the issue than the result/fix. To this day, my feed is littered with articles about the problem, even though it has been responded to. Everyone has their own facts… very few people know the actual facts. So, has technology disrupted the truth?” (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.