In a time of information overload, careful curation is a way any of us can add value to the the lives and minds of our peers. In that spirit, and on the encouragement of my friend Mike Mathews, I thought I’d experiment with a link-blog type post, which will then be delivered to email newsletter subscribers, and see if that’s something I can do regularly.
Here are 10 things I read, watched, or listened to this week that I found so valuable I wanted to share them. I cut out the political ones, this time.
Tech
- Humans in the Loop collective intelligence (Video) “Superminds: The Surprising Power of People and Computers Thinking Together with MIT’s Thomas Malone“
This 45 minute talk suggests that we move from the AI concept of “humans in the loop” to a paradigm of humans working together, augmented by machines, or “computers in the group.”
- Roam Research raises a round of funding, at a $200 million valuation. Roam has already changed the lives of so many of its users, including mine. It’s not only where I do all my digital note taking, it also facilitates entirely new thoughts every time I allow it to. No wonder investors were able to support its ongoing development at such a dramatically high price.
Woop woop, that’s where I work! I’m having a great time and am excited about the future. This got lots of press, but the TechCrunch post was particularly good.
Foresight & Strategy
Futurist Amy Webb offers multiple tools for foresight on her company’s home page. This “Axes of Uncertainty” is a simple and powerful one.
Great conversation about AI but I’m putting it in Foresight because one of the strongest points is that AI’s pattern recognition powers makes it particularly well suited to the Observe and Orient stages of the OODA loop, supporting humans as they take responsibility for the Decide and Act stages.
Climate
- OPML of Green Energy Sources (there’s a download link in this Tweet about it)
If you know how to import an OPML file into an RSS feed reader, here is an algorithmically created collection of the top sources on green energy that others in the green energy field pay attention to. I built it on Sunday because I’m really trying to dig into climate matters. You might also like this Twitter List of 1K peer-validated climate change thought leaders.. There are almost 10K people following it!
If you don’t know how to import an OPML file into an RSS reader, you’re really missing out. My wife often teases me that I told her about RSS on our first date, and now 17 years later we’re very happily married!
Guess what % of the world’s new energy production capacity installed last year was from renewable energy? Guess what % of global energy used is now from renewable? Great informed discussion here. Happily, the answers to those questions are 80 and 27. I was surprised by both of those.
Even people who find this podcast annoying agree it’s chock full of some very good information and some reason for optimism.
6 minute interview with two indigenous people about the use of fire. I’ve watched this and shared it many times. I encourage you to watch it too.
Beautiful. Tired of the view out your window? Try someone else’s. Not tired of the view out your window? You may appreciate this even more, then.