Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #406

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: 

• The Surprising Creativity of Digital Evolution: A Collection of Anecdotes from the Evolutionary Computation and Artificial Life Research Communities – Cornell University Library. “Machine learning and AI are everywhere. They’re basically algorithms that make their better successors. But they do so in relentless pursuit of some goal–what data scientists call an Objective Function. They’ll often achieve that goal in surprising ways. This list of ways AIs produce unintended results should serve as a cautionary tale for anyone wanting to understand what happens when we set code free to experiment with its offspring.” (Alistair for Hugh).
• How Big Wireless Made Us Think That Cell Phones Are Safe: A Special Investigation – The Nation. “You probably put a phone to your head pretty often. And studies show it’s safe…right? Well, once oil companies knew they were warming the earth; and once tobacco companies knew they were killing people. And the wireless industry may be up to similar things. Before you say, ‘the benefits of wireless outweigh the costs,’ remember that the Internet of Things, and the advent of 5G, will dramatically increase the levels of radiation to which we’re exposed. Yikes.” (Alistair for Mitch).
• 10 Years After The Crisis – The Wall Street Journal. “Hey kids, when I was your age there was a giant financial crisis, and some of us thought capitalism was going to crumble under its own appetite for cheap credit and increasing profits for banks. That was way back in 2008, before I got a smart phone. Well, basically, nothing has changed, we haven’t learned any lessons, and the next crisis will be a humdinger.” (Hugh for Alistair).
• The Paradox of Universal Basic Income – Wired. “Universal basic income (just pay everyone a basic amount of money so they can pay for food and shelter) seems like an OK solution to the coming (or already here) problem of mass unemployment from the robot overlords. But, I still can’t wrap my head around why it won’t just cause inflation, thereby wiping out the value of the case given out. Anyway, here’s an overview of UBI and what it’s supposed to do.” (Hugh for Mitch).
• Financial Times CEO John Ridding explains how to make people pay for media – Recode. “This is a really interesting podcast on content, paid content, subscriptions models and much more. What if you were a publisher and all you ever did was sell your content… and then the Internet hits? Do you suddenly open up and let your content go, or do you stick to your guns? Content wants to be free? Not so sure. Take a listen…” (Mitch for Alistair).
• The New Yorker Interview – Malcolm Gladwell Explains Where His Ideas Come From – The New Yorker. “I really, really, really enjoyed this video interview with Malcolm Gladwell. He spills the beans on how he thinks about writing and where his ideas germinate. Hugh, I think you will really like his thinking around his podcast, Revisionist History, and podcasting in general. I learned a lot. I think that you will too…” (Mitch for Hugh).

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