Six Links Worthy of Your Attention This Week

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:

• Remove the legend to become one — Remains of the Day. “This article is both a great piece on the proper use of graphs and Tufte’s call for parsimony, and a behind-the-scenes look at the almost maniacal focus Amazon had on analytics and data-driven decision-making from the very start. Oh, and it’s got some Excel nostalgia in it too.” (Alistair for Hugh).
• Slaughterbots — Stop Autonomous Weapons — YouTube. “When we see a self-driving car, we think about AI. What we should be thinking about is relentless persistence, unflinching attention, and superhuman senses. The algorithms are the easy part. And when those become weapons of war, they’re more lethal than nukes — and simpler to create and deploy. Autonomous weapons are a bad idea for the future of organic creatures. And, if you want to make the layperson think about tech, well, this video is about as good as it gets. It’s like a short episode of Black Mirror. And most of it is real today.” (Alistair for Mitch).

• America’s ‘Retail Apocalypse’ Is Really Just Beginning — Bloomberg.”America’s retailers took on enormous debt in the past decade. That debt is coming due. Plus, Amazon. It’s going to be ugly in the retail space in the USA, with huge implications for lower-end of the employment. We continue to live in interesting times.” (Hugh for Alistair).
• Digital Polarization on Pinterest — Mike Caulfield — YouTube. “Mike Caufield shows you how quickly you can go from mason jar crafter to radicalized conspiracy theorist on Pinterest with two pins, one page visit and 14 minutes. It’s pretty scary, and is a good proxy for what is happening in our political discourse. Question: How should we run our society now?”(Hugh for Mitch).

• What I Wish I Knew At 22 — Laura Gassner Otting — LinkedIn. “My buddy, Laura, wrote this piece on LinkedIn back in 2016. It just came back on my radar. It’s so good. It’s so true… and, while I may not be 22, there are still tons of lessons in her article that I should really be taking closer to heart. How about you?” (Mitch for Alistair).
• Meet the People Who Listen to Podcasts at Super-Fast Speeds — BuzzFeed. “As a huge fan of the podcast space, here’s something super interesting. It could also be an inflection point for me: I’m old… I listen to podcasts at the speed with which the conversation is recorded. I think there is a nuance in hearing the pauses and phrasing of how people think and speak. Did I just become an olds? What do you think?” (Mitch for Hugh).

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

Mitch Joel is President of Mirum — a global digital marketing agency operating in close to 20 countries. His first book, Six Pixels of Separation, named after his successful blog and podcast is a business and marketing bestseller. His second book, CTRL ALT Delete, was named one of the best business books of 2013 by Amazon. Learn more at: www.mitchjoel.com.