Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #354

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: 

Inside Alabama's Auto Jobs Boom: Cheap Wages, Little Training, Crushed Limbs - Bloomberg Business Week . "Here's a bleak look at the manufacturing 'resurgence' - 12-hour shifts, seven days a week. And a heads up: This is not for the timid. If the sentence 'no one knew how to make the robot release her' sounds uncomfortable, you might not want to read the rest. Basically, it boils down to this: Robots are better at jobs than humans (a Chinese factory that replaced 90% of its humans with robots saw a 250% productivity increase). They consume human jobs. And, when humans try to keep up, they work insane hours and put themselves in mortal danger. The rest should be clear, for any policy-maker wanting to confront the facts." (Alistair for Hugh).
The Robots Really Did Take People's Jobs, Study Confirms - BuzzFeed News . "I decided to go all in on robots, automation, and construction this week. Here's something often debated, but (until now) poorly researched. A recently released study by the National Bureau of Economic Research (you can read the whole 90+ page thing, complete with formulae, if you like) concluded that 'every new robot added to an American factory in recent decades reduced employment in the surrounding area by 6.2 workers,' and 'for every one robot per thousands workers in a given area of the country, the employment rate went down by .2 -.3 percentage points, and wages fell by between .25 and .5 percent.' So yes, those robots did take your jobs." (Alistair for Mitch).
Get Lost in Mega-Tunnels Dug by South American Megafauna - Discover . "Giant sloths from the Pleistocene period (~2 million to ~10,000 years ago) dug massive caves in South America. So there's that." (Hugh for Alistair).
The Case for Shyness - The Atlantic . "I often think that much of the web was invented so that shy people wouldn't have to talk (face to face) with strangers." (Hugh for Mitch).
How Aristotle Created the Computer - The Atlantic . "When we think about the history of the computer, we tend to focus on machines, code, software, electricity and... well, math. What if the computer (and computing) was actually created much further back than we thought? Like... much, much further back..." (Mitch for Alistair).
'Your animal life is over. Machine life has begun.' The road to immortality - The Guardian . "If this sounds like science fiction... well, all science fiction eventually becomes non-fiction, right? Mobile phones, virtual reality, big data, and more. Now, Silicon Valley is turning its attention to our very core. Can we use technology to get us beyond this whole 'dying' thing? Is immortality just a few years/decades away? Haunting. Science comes from science fiction?" (Mitch for Hugh).

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

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