Weekly Links & Thoughts #37

Here is a weekly selection of thoughtful opinion pieces, interesting analyses and significant yet under-reported information bits from the digital and technology world. Published and commented every Thursday, just in time so you have something good to read during the weekend.

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• A 21st-Century Migrant’s Essentials: Food, Shelter, Smartphone
  
  Very insightful article explaining how the smartphone disrupts the way how refugees operate and move forward.
• The Best Jobs Now Require You To Be A People Person
  
  Traditionally, women are more seen as the “people persons” compared to men. Considering the changing job landscape, we men better try to learn being people persons, as well. The next post might be helpful…
• I’ve Spent A Lifetime Building a Mighty Network. Here Are My Secrets.
  
  This great piece offers a lot of ideas and wisdom about networking, how it is done and why it is so valuable in the long run.
• Hookup culture isn’t the real problem facing singles today. It’s math.
  
  A convincing argumentation for that today’s casual hookup culture is a byproduct of shifiting demographics among the colleage-educated, not of Tinder or Facebook.
• How Social Media Is Ruining Politics
  
  I guess one could have a long debate about whether social media actually is ruining politics, or only changing it. But yes, it is changing it for sure. And Donald Trump is one of those politicians driving this change.
• Can free speech survive the internet?
  
  This is something I notice asking myself from time to time as well. Here is a solid analysis of the situation, including a description of a few possible outcomes.
• Iceland’s Pirates continue poll surge
  
  An incredible 36 % of the Icelandic voters would vote for the Pirate party. The next parliamentary elections will take place in 2017.
• A Modern Day Take on the Ethics of Being a Programmer
  
  This post raises important questions about the ethics of being a programmer in an age in which the things that programmers built shape everything about daily life and human interaction.
• How Time Perception Shapes User Experience
  
  I enjoyed reading this text a lot. Its focus is on user experience from a product designer’s point of view, but it offers many insights to those using digital products (or products in general) as well.
• The Honeywell Bubble Count Revisited
  
  An encouragement to create more diversity in one’s Twitter timeline. I actively have been trying to do that for a while.
• Why Gogo’s Infuriatingly Expensive, Slow Internet Still Owns the Skies
  
  Profile & criticism of the main provider of inflight Wi-Fi on flights in the U.S.
• Apple is reportedly planning to make its own movies and TV shows
  
  In my eyes, Apple should stick to producing great hardware products and building awesome operating systems instead of focusing so much on content. But somehow the company is suffering from a “we have to do everything that everyone else does” syndrome.
• Why Profit Doesn’t Come Into It For Apple Music
  
  Clever thought: If Apple would want to earn money with streaming music, it would promote Spotify & other rivals and get rich(er) through the 30 percent revenue cut.
• Report: U.S. average daily mobile game time drops over 30% in a year
  
  Here is the key quote from the article: “Millennials are shifting from playing games to watching others play games, creating a new category of entertainment called eSports”.
• That week I tried to unplug from Slack
• Slack, the Ultimate Workday Distractor
  
  I can relate to those two pieces. Slack can become as annoying and counter-productive as email, or even worse.
• The Story Behind How Pocket Hit 20M Users with 20 People
  
  I am a big fan of one-person-startups that grow slowly and in a sustainable way. The popular read-it-later service Pocket has exactly done that, before it started to grow exponentially. Inspiring story.
• 10 tips on how to write shorter
  
  Awesome list. I put this on my desktop and will try to remember having a look at it occasionally. Very useful for writers, bloggers and journalists.

And most recently on meshedsociety.com

• The world changes. Deal with it.