Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #390

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: 

• 1000 different people, the same words – Kieran Snyder – Medium. “Mining data for people’s personalities is an interesting hobby. In this analysis, AI company, Textio, looked at how companies’ job description wordings have underlying patterns, and what they say about that company’s culture. ‘When your PR talks about work/life balance, but your team consistently advertises jobs that are work hard/play hard, your team is the one telling the truth.'” (Alistair for Hugh).
• Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism – LessWrong. “In this time of political and social controversy, it’s important to remember that no universally tolerant society can survive. Specifically, to remain tolerant, it must be intolerant of one thing: Intolerance. This is from 2009, but never more relevant. ‘The thing about online communities, though, is that you can’t rely on the police ignoring you and staying on the job; the community actually pays the price of its virtuousness.'” (Alistair for Mitch).
• How the Index Card Cataloged the World – The Atlantic. “The digital age is in so many ways a perfecting of a simple technical invention: the index card. But where did the index card come from? Turns out Linnaeus, the guy who first systematized genetic heredity, more or less invented index cards in the process.” (Hugh for Alistair). 
• New York City Wants to Audit the Powerful Algorithms That Control Our Lives – Gizmodo. “I’m not sure how much good this would do, but the more people talk about, and try to understand the ways in which algorithms are and will shape our lives, the better.” (Hugh for Mitch).
• AI isn’t just compromising our privacy–it can limit our choices, too – Quartz. “Technology scares us. It’s a fact. We’re humans. Fire bad. Anything new freaks us out. Plus, unlike when we discovered fire, we’ve also learned, have grown, become more educated and learned from our mistakes. Of have we? In this fascinating piece, an argument is made: will our free choice be taken away as artificial intelligence delivers on its promise? Before you go screaming, take a second to consider this notion. If AI can truly deliver, in theory, it should know us better than we know ourselves, and the output of it will be either the best decision for us, or the one that makes the most sense. If that is true, where does choice go?” (Mitch for Alistair).
  
• Norway becomes first country to end national radio broadcasts on FM – The Guardian. “Norway is the first country in the world to shut down national broadcasts of it’s FM network. No, radio ins’t dead in Norway. They have, simply, completed the transition to digital radio. What are they left with? Better sound quality, more channels, much more functionality and, according to them, at an eight of the cost of FM radio. To me, this smells less like the shift from traditional to digital, and more like a country self-aware enough to ditch legacy technology when something better is right in front of them. When will other countries follow suit? It’s hard to complain about a media channel (and their performance), when there is a better and different solution that might make listeners and advertisers fall in love with it all over again.” (Mitch for Hugh).

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