Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #41

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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:

  • iCorrect. "With the Web, everyone’s a broadcaster. Which means anyone can slander anyone else with the click of a button. It’s not sending the message that costs money — it’s squashing it. Twitter has ‘verified accounts,’ Reddit checks identities for its Ask Me Anything discussions (or not, depending on who you ask). Now iCorrect wants to become a clearinghouse for facts. It charges users a pretty penny to defend themselves, and presumably wants to save reporters the work of actually checking their facts. Needless to say, reading the teeth-gnashing and hand-wringing of its well-heeled defenders can be a lot of fun. Hat tip to @acase and friends for this one." (Alistair for Hugh).
  • Jaron Lanier: The Frontiers of Augmented Reality and Human Potential – Microsoft Advertising. "We owe much to Jaron Lanier: virtual realities, parallel computing, and a disdain for a too-connected, inorganic world. In this video, he discusses the impact of technologies like Microsoft‘s Kinect and the future of computing. Always interesting to hear from someone who lives twenty years in the future." (Alistair for Mitch).
  • Physical Cosmologies: The Shining (excerpt) part one – MSTRMND. "I wasn’t sure whether to link to this long piece – a dense and difficult, but fascinating, analysis of Stanley Kubrick‘s ‘The Shining‘ – or the short blog-post that lead me to it (found here)… In the end, my link is for the long article, though I never would have read it without the context provided by the short blog post." (Hugh for Alistair).
  • 507 – Darkness and Cherry Pie: David Lynch’s Map of Twin Peaks – Big Think. "A description of the geography of Twin Peaks, the television show that first defined TV as a serious art-form, an art-form that has eclipsed both books and movies in artistic importance." (Hugh for Mitch).
  • Peer-to-Peer Space Morphs as Institutions Do More of the Lending – American Banker. "The digitization of industry affects every industry. The challenge is that we’re not just talking about physical cheques becoming digital data. Once you digitize an industry, it also opens itself up to act more like digital entities and it can make use of the many new ways a hyper-connected group of people communicate. Did you ever think that financial institutions would leverage the peer-to-peer ethos in their business? Take a read and watch the world change right before your eyes." (Mitch for Alistair).
  • Long-Form Journalism Finds a Home – The New York Times. "There was a common held misconception that because of the Internet and our desire to have quick and snackable content (250 word Blog posts or 140 character tweets) that long-form journalism would die. What we’re learning is that this is not true. In fact, whatever type of content you would like to create can now find a home. These ‘homes’ are changing and evolving right before our eyes. As more and more people buy iPads and get comfortable with paying for content on the fly, perhaps we’re about to enter a new golden era in long-form journalism? Evan Ratcliff and Nicholas Thompson (both employees of Wired) decided to do something about this opportunity and created The Atavist. The Atavist is a ‘tiny curio of a business that looks for new ways to present long-form content for the digital age. All the richness of the Web — links to more information, videos, casts of characters — is right there in an app displaying an article, but with a swipe of the finger, the presentation reverts to clean text that can be scrolled by merely tilting the device.’ It’s a great time to be alive (I realize that’s the second time I’m turning that phrase in this paragraph): we’re able to watch the next generation of journalism blossom right before our eyes." (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.

3 comments

  1. Jaron Lanier 20 years in the future for the general public, but it’s good to hear these talks in mainstream.

  2. Interesting article from The Economist about the “inverse relationship between the scope of the information and the number of people involved in its production”. For example, newspaper journalism involves few authors but greater “implied universality”. In contrast, sites like Twitter and Quora and functions like group texting have more authors and less universality (or “truth”, according to the author, which is an fascinating topic in and of itself).
    http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/03/new_media?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/universaltruthsinternaldialogues

  3. Interesting links. Thanks Mitch! I enjoyed it.. it’s good to have some spare time enjoying your self around.

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