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: 

• Ancient dreams of intelligent machines: 3,000 years of robots – Nature. “Humans have been thinking about automata for centuries. I found this roundup of historical examples fascinating, and food for thought. Today we see AI through twin lenses: the rose color of deity, and the shade of demon. But as this shows, those aren’t the only colours.” (Alistair for Hugh).
• This Is My Nerf Blaster, This Is My Gun – Topic. “Decades ago, I equipped my startup with Nerf weapons that fired small rubber donuts, spinning lazily among the cubicles in an almost laughingly stereotypical display out of the episodes of Silicon Valley. Seemed harmless. And then a few weeks ago I watched Adam Savage mod a Nerf gun to give it a magazine that held a thousand rounds, then use it to nail three people in inflatable dinosaur costumes. It got me thinking: Wow, Nerf has come a long way. Apparently I wasn’t the only one wondering that.” (Alistair for Mitch).
• Capital of the World – The Nation. “New York really is an extraordinary city, and a new book by Mike Wallace, Greater Gotham, traces the transformation between 1898 and 1919, which includes the 4 years (it would take us longer now!) it took to build the New York City subway.” (Hugh for Alistair).
• 12% of music industry revenues go to musicians – BoingBoing. “A refresher on how copyright and distribution monopolies work, and not in favor of artists. A nice spin about the rivalry between Big Tech and Big Content being a glitch caused by billionaires hiring different sets of managers to grow their wealth.” (Hugh for Mitch).
• Are We at the End of the Future? – Umar Haque – Medium. “A very big and deep question. It feels a little bit like, ‘maybe this is as good as it gets’? Probably not true. The future is always coming. Don’t believe me? Let’s talk tomorrow 😉 If the future still one of hope and dreams? This is a thoughtful piece about the pace of innovation and why we – as humans – pursue it… or should we?” (Mitch for Alistair).
• Newsletters Are Immortal – Dave Pell – Medium. “This falls under the ‘do as I say… not as I do.’ For the fifteen-plus years that I have been publishing content, I have not collected any email addresses, and I don’t have a newsletter. I’m looking to fix that. Well, with this piece of writing, I have been pushed. Hard. This is a great article by a wonderful writer and curator of the web. If you don’t subscribe to NextDraft, you really should. Plus, it’s hard not to love Dave Pell, especially when you see his job title: Managing Editor, Internet.” (Mitch for Hugh).

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