Categories: Articles

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #69

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, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, iambik, PressBooks, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so 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:

Chaos Computer Club analyzes government malware – Chaos Computer Club. "As we use computers to communicate more and more, wiretapping doesn’t work — there’s no ‘middle’ to tap into, and the end nodes of a phone call are easily encrypted. So, the German government introduced ‘Quellen-TKÜ’ (source wiretapping), a complicated way of saying ‘software we put on your machine to spy on you.’ They argued that this was just for intercepting voice calls, as other activity on a computer is protected by the German constitution. But what a European hacker group found when they reverse-engineered the tool was something that went far beyond wiretapping, allowing authorities to take complete control of a subject’s computer." (Alistair for Hugh).
How Hard Is It To Get a Cartoon Into The New Yorker? – Slate. "The iconic magazine is famous for its whimsical comics, which look pretty easy on the surface. Here, James Sturm tries to get a piece accepted, revealing the strange travails of authors seeking attention. Bonus: whimsical comics." (Alistair for Mitch).
Noam Chomsky & Michel Foucault Debate Human Nature & Power (1971) – Open Culture. "Noam Chomsky (American linguist and leftist intellectual) and Michel Foucault (French postmodernist philosopher) debate power, society, culture, from 1971." (Hugh for Alistair).
The End of the Future – National Review Online. "Peter Thiel (founding CEO of PayPal) on our stagnating innovation, and how it explains to a large degree the great economic muddle we find ourselves in. Step one is to admit we have a problem." (Hugh for Mitch).
That Data Is So You – AdWeek. "When we think about data, we often just think about the bits and bytes that fly across the Internet that speak to who is doing what, where they’re going and what’s happening, but what about all of our personal data? There is a movement to make the data about you – as a person – your own. If you think about this concept at a macro level, it makes a ton of sense: everything you do should be owned by you… shouldn’t it? The promise of advertising and marketing success is always about the gold in the data. So, here we go again, should Facebook own this data (because they offer a service for free) or should it be owned by the consumer? Whose gold is it anyway?" (Mitch for Alistair).
Secrets of Success – Radiolab. "This is a great audio Podcast where Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, etc…) explains why school for gifted and talented students may be bunk. Is there a correlation between superstar athletes and billionaire business people? What about those who change the world at a more social level? While the content in this Podcast is amazing, it’s also another highlight about how valuable the content we get online is when compared to the more traditional broadcasting channels. I’d also be remised to not mention that I found out about this Podcast via Bob Lefsetz." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it’s your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

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.