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, Solve For Interesting, the author of Complete Web Monitoring, Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks and Lean Analytics), 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:
- I used to lead tours at a plantation. You won’t believe the questions I got about slavery. – Vox. “Topical, and sobering. If we’re going to tackle racism, we can’t sweep it under the rug. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation hearings were painful, like opening wounds, but they made the past unavoidable. Apparently, tourists in the South don’t agree.” (Alistair for Hugh).
- Holocaust ‘hero’ Sir Nicholas Winton dies aged 106 – BBC. “A life well lived. Everyone knows Schindler; Winton, who shunned public praise, smuggled hundreds of kids out of Europe and just died on the anniversary of the last train out.” (Alistair for Mitch).
- Stories for machines, data for humans – Discontents. “Alistair and I once gave a presentation together called: ’An API for Books,’ and both of us have done work, in one way or another, thinking about what books could be in our digital world, and sadly, aren’t for the most part. Tim Sherett is an Oz-based academic who is always doing cool projects reimagining books and academic writing as if, instead of just printing on paper paper, we could also structure our books as data and have them live in the cloud. Here, he talks about his experiments.” (Hugh for Alistair).
- Welcome to Jun, the town that ditched bureaucracy to run on Twitter – The Guardian. “Fascinating direction for a Spanish town, that now does all its town business via Twitter, supposedly reducing bureaucracy, speeding up town services.” (Hugh for Mitch).
- Welcome To The Age Of The Micro-Singularity – Fast Company Co.Exist. “I’m not sure if I am satisfied with using the word ‘singularity’ for what is being described in this article, but there is an interesting thought here. When we’re all connected… and we all come together around an idea, what does that mean? Does it mean anything? Is it worth putting a title on it? Does it impact culture in new and different ways? Bigger thought for me: are businesses going to get into this? Will brands suddenly start looking for their own multi-singularity as the highest form of recognition and value?” (Mitch for Alistair).
- Reading Is Forgetting – The New York Book of Reviews. “Maybe people don’t read enough books, because it’s a ton of work. Not just mentally, but physical work. Moving our eyes, line after line, page after page for days on end. It’s exhausting on our bodies. In fact, maybe we can’t even really take in anything on our first read. Maybe, all of us need to read the same book 4-5 times to really take in what the author intended (as this article suggests). Wow… I love to read, and I don’t think I could ever read something like a book that many times. I don’t think I know anyone who would/could. So, are we actually taking in anything when we read, or is it all forgotten in the moment? I never thought of reading this way. Have you?” (Mitch for Hugh).
Feel free to share these links and add your picks on Twitter, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.