Categories: Articles

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #389

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 (Solve for Interesting, Tilt the Windmill, HBS, chair of Strata, Startupfest, Pandemonio, and ResolveTO, Author of Lean Analytics and some other books), 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:

Postmortem: Every Frame a Painting – Tony Zhou – Medium. “The YouTube channel Every Frame A Painting has been doing visual storytelling for years now. And, with this post, they wrapped things up. ‘My name is Tony and my name is Taylor, and this concludes Every Frame a Painting.’ I hadn’t been following their story, but if you’re a creative type working today, this is a fascinating read — and I have a few hours of videos to catch up on.” (Alistair for Hugh).
I Made My Shed the Top Rated Restaurant On TripAdvisor – Vice. “If true, this is a scathing indictment of ratings sites. If not, it’s the best example of trolling I’ve seen on the Internet in recent years. Either way, you need to see this — if only for the behind-the-scenes photos of food staging.” (Alistair for Mitch).
Is There a Limit to Scientific Understanding? – The Atlantic. “Science is still pretty bad at describing real complexity, and still terrible at explaining our own brains. Maybe that’s a constraint of human consciousness, and a limit of our ability to truly understand the world around us.” (Hugh for Alistair).
Kick Against the Pricks – The New York Review of Books. “Laura Kipnis pulls no punches in this snarky and wise overview of the spate of powerful men falling on their, er, swords. The article is more remarkable in its shading beyond black and white.” (Hugh for Mitch).
Ambient AI Is About to Devour the Software Industry – Technology Review. “Amazon. Oh, Amazon. When you mix artificial intelligence and machine learning into cloud platforms, something really big is/will happen. Not enough people get it, understand it or are ready for the ramifications. From this article: ‘This shift promises to be the biggest transition for the software world in decades. The easy availability of on-demand machine learning, combined with tools for automating the design and training of AI models, should, in fact, have an increasing impact on overall economic productivity, according to some economists.’ It’s not about new software. Not at all. As the article surmises: ‘…cloud-based machine learning is about to take the software industry by storm–and, by extension, to rewire the entire economy.’ Yes, the entire economy.” (Mitch for Alistair).
‘Let the soul dangle’: how mind-wandering spurs creativity – Aeon. “If all you are ever doing is transitioning from deep work into a Facebook feed, into YouTube, into dinner, into Netflix and beyond, you are busy trying to fill your day. Being active is so important. No doubt. But what about just letting your mind wander? How about just giving yourself a beat… a long beat… a long walk… or just do nothing. Literally, nothing. Not even a meditation or mindfulness session. Nothing. Just put your mind out on a clothesline and do nothing until it dries. What could happen? Perhaps… maybe… a massive breakthrough?” (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.