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:
- Year 1999 AD – A/V Geeks – YouTube. “The future is hard to get right. Those AT&T ‘You Will’ ads from the eighties with Tom Selleck were interesting, but completely missed the advent of the smartphone. But this film from 1967 was way earlier—and got a lot of things right. While the computers might be laughably big, they did pretty well—although they didn’t get into the dystopian consequences of filter bubbles, or the vulnerability that liberal democracies have to automated disinformation. But hey, they have six-wheeled cars and online shopping! And then the household computer starts nagging them to exercise when the bed says they’re heavy, and you realize it’s not that great after all.” (Alistair for Hugh).
- A roundtable on the platforms, speech, and… 👀 – Columbia Journalism Review. “Here’s a fascinating transcript from the Columbia Journalism Review featuring Canada’s very own Mathew Ingram and friends. It’s an excellent roundup of the state of journalism in an era of social platforms. Jonathan Zittrain is here, too, with some classically provocative suggestions: ‘having American high school students, for a grade and under guidance of their teachers, make the calls’ on questionable content. Long read, but well worth it to see what some of the smartest people thinking about information and journalism have to say.” (Alistair for Mitch).
- Daylighting Melbourne: how we can transform our cities, street by street – Dark Matter & Trojan Horses – Medium. “Been a while since I posted a link from the delightful Dan Hill, who writes about how we can make cities better for people.” (Hugh for Alistair).
- Testing 9 New Mini Cheetahs – Biomimetics MIT – YouTube. “Our robot overlords might be smaller than we thought.” (Hugh for Mitch).
- The Weirdness Is Coming – New York Magazine. “Time to head over to your local magazine store and pick up the latest issue of New York Magazine. This is a piece from their The Future Issue, which is always chock full of articles about technology and what’s next. These types of issues still resonate with me. Spending some serious time with physical paper thinking about how to decode the future is my jam. If this article is any indication of the issue’s quality, it should be a great few days of scouring the pages and taking lots of notes. I hope it is for you as well.” (Mitch for Alistair).
- The Life Cycle of a Library Book – Book Riot. “I didn’t know that the dumpster is often the final resting place for library books. Did you? I have a deep love and appreciation for the library (no matter how digital I am). This article is a fascinating view into how library books wind up on the shelf, and their ultimate fate. If you think you know the story, Dear Reader, I challenge you to take a read. From there, figure out a way to get more involved in your local community’s library. Sidebar: my local library is having a book sale this weekend. I can’t wait to check it out.” (Mitch for Hugh).
Feel free to share these links and add your picks on Twitter, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.