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:
- Space shuttle rocket booster test – Speed – BBC. "Space shuttle rockets burn hydrogen and oxygen, two parts to one. In that respect, they’re really pretty clean, giving off only water vapor. But they’re also really messy, particularly when it comes to noise pollution. Top Gear‘s Jeremy Clarkson visits Louisiana, where NASA tests its launch systems. Wow." (Alistair for Hugh).
- William Gibson: Opening Lines – Nowness. "’Javnaker slipped from the quantum universe-splitter that wasn’t actually a time machine’ would not be good for the reader.’ In this Nowness piece, cyberpunk giant, William Gibson, tells us how he struggled to write his first lines. As he points out, ‘We have to learn to write fiction, but we have already, to varying degrees, had to learn to read it.’" (Alistair for Mitch).
- What is it like to have an understanding of very advanced mathematics? – Quora. "A high-level mathematician answers the question: ‘what is it like to have your brain?’ Lots of interesting analogies to any kind of real expertise (programming, startups), particularly how an accumulation of knowledge and experience leads us to intuitive hunches about things, that, once the work is done, prove to be correct." (Hugh for Alistair).
- Facts On Farts – Heptune. "I suffer from occasional bouts of insomnia, and usually turn to my iPhone when I can’t sleep. Somehow or other (such a mystery, sometimes) I landed on this page, and couldn’t stop reading. It was written by Brenna Lorenz (a geology prof) in 1998, and is the sort of thing we find so rarely now on the Web: an idiosyncratic, and informative essay about a topic close to the heart of one individual (complete with flashing gif!). NOTE: the difference between my links for Alistair and Mitch this week say nothing about my opinion of their relative intelligences." (Hugh for Mitch).
- Is Internet access a human right? – The Guardian. "I Blogged about the notion that Internet access should be a human right back in August of 2010 (more on that here: The Internet As Your Birthright) and the topic got heated again this week when Vint Cert (one of Internet’s inventors and current Chief Internet Evangelist at Google) published an op-ed piece in The New York Times titled, Internet Access Is Not a Human Right. What’s most interesting is that – once again – we’re struggling with definitions of words and phrases (like "human right") because we live in a very different world from the world where these words were first introduced. If the Internet does become the primary way that information gets disseminated, how do we – as a society – not make it a basic human right?" (Mitch for Alistair).
- The House That Ogilvy Built – Strategy + Business. "Being the Marketing nerd that I am, I devoured the book, The King of Madison Avenue – David Ogilvy and the Making of Modern Advertising, by Kenneth Roman back in 2009 when it was first published. I wish I could tell you how this article (which is an edited excerpt from that book) made it across my desk this week, but in re-reading it, I was – once again – inspired to do more, be more and think more. We tend to be looking around for the next big whiz-bang gadget and often forget that the path to business greatness could well be things like culture, integrity and charm… especially in a world like ours. And yes, those are the perfect words to describe what exactly, a marketing agency is actually selling." (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.