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, FWD50, and Scaletechconf; author of Lean Analytics and some other books), Hugh McGuire (Rebus Foundation, PressBooks, LibriVox) 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:
- How Paywalls are Making Us Dumber – International Policy Digest. “I’ve been struggling to get my brain around the long-term impact of media business models. It’s a dangerously slippery slope. This dives into something I’ve been trying to articulate clearly for a while: Let’s say you want to fact check something with other sources. You’ll quickly find that (for example) the Washington Post, Wired, and The Economist are behind paywalls, while (for example) Brietbart, Shareblue, and Infowars are free. Why? From a business standpoint, reporting costs money. And by definition, made-up content attracts a more gullible audience, which is easier to sell things to. So costs are down and advertising revenue is up for outrage-fueled, clickbait-driven content, while legitimate news sites either face layoffs, or hide their truth hostage where only the rich can read it. On today’s web, you pay for actual journalism, but fake news is free. I don’t haver an answer. Are we doomed?” (Alistair for Hugh).
- Every Single Video Prince Ever Made – Anil Dash. “New to me, but Anil Dash built this exhaustive list last November. I came across it because Anil is speaking at Startupfest this summer, so I was stalking what he’s been up to since I first met him at Foo Camp years ago. I’m setting aside an evening to go through this in detail; many of the videos were hard to find, in part because of the star’s mercurial approach to public performance. But his estate has made it easier to find them, and even the first few remind us just how extraordinary he was.” (Alistair for Mitch).
- What I want from modern architecture – Spectator. “How architecture should make us happy, not alienated.” (Hugh for Alistair).
- The ‘Moral Clarity’ of ‘Slaughterhouse-Five’ at 50 – The New York Times. “Kurt Vonnegut‘s Slaughterhouse 5 is one of the seminal books of my late teen years. Read here through the eyes of an Iraq war veteran.” (Hugh for Mitch).
- The Servant Economy – The Atlantic. “People forget how Uber started. The point was that there are many black cars that are mostly used for executives shuffling to and from the airport, that are mostly idle in any given city, on any given day at any given time. For those who want that kind of experience, an app where you can click a button and have a (fairly) reasonable black car experience might be of service and value to both the consumer and the drivers (if they didn’t want their cars simply waiting around and doing nothing). Uber evolved. The on-demand economy pushed a new kind of worker. These workers were available to work, freelance and be their own entrepreneurs all rolled up into one (and on their own terms). It sounds good. It sounds good until we realize that the economics kinda blow. If these workers are now servants, just how far off are we from them being slaves?” (Mitch for Alistair).
- Delete Never: The Digital Hoarders Who Collect Tumblrs, Medieval Manuscripts, and Terabytes of Text Files – Gizmodo. “How old were you when you realized that you are a digital hoarder? I was today years old. I don’t (really) delete all that much. I have stuff in the cloud, stuff on external hard drives, stuff on USB sticks. Much of that data is for platforms that I no longer use. Why not torch it all? I do not know. Now, I don’t seem to be in the same lot as some of the people featured in this article, but data hoarding is a thing. Who knew? And… fascinating!” (Mitch for Hugh).
Feel free to share these links and add your picks on Twitter, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.