Kickoff For November 18, 2019
Welcome to this week’s edition of the Monday Kickoff, a collection of what I’ve found interesting, informative, and insightful on the web over the last seven days.
It’s a new week, with a new mix of articles to fill your brain with thoughts and ideas. And who says Monday is the worst day of the week?
Let’s get this Monday started with these links:
Arts and Literature
The Czech Play That Gave Us the Word ‘Robot’, wherein we learn about Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R., and how it shows humanity’s hubris by trying to create artificial life.
The Life and Death of an American Indie Press, wherein we hear the tale of Curbside Splendor, a small publisher in Chicago, that gained a reputation for both publishing solid books from first-time authors and for stiffing those authors.
Books Won’t Die, wherein we go back to a topic I wrote about in 1993: that despite all the advances and so-called innovation in reading technology, the printed book will continue to survive.
Productivity
Live on Purpose, wherein Leo Babauta discusses ways in which we can try to liberate ourselves from our daily grinds, and suggests how we can live with a purpose.
The Key For Remembering, Organizing And Using Everything You Read, wherein Ryan Holiday explains how he uses note cards to become better organized, more creative, and more productive.
Think long term. That’s it. That’s the advice., wherein we learn how short-term thinking has longer-term repercussions, and about the importance of (and difficulty in) breaking the cycle of focusing on the short term.
Technology
The crowdfunded phone of the future was a multimillion-dollar scam, wherein we learn the story of the Dragonfly Futurefön, a bleeding-edge, crowdfunded device that never saw the light of day, and discover the legal drama involving its creator that unfolded.
Four Years in Startups, wherein Anna Wiener describes how she fell into working for a series of tech startups, and how she became disillusioned with them and the culture that they uniformly incubated.
The Decentralized Web Is Coming, wherein we get a peek at where the web could be going: shifting away from corporate control and back to the original vision for the web. Fingers crossed …
And that’s it for this Monday. Come back in seven days for another set of links to start off your week.