12 articles that I enjoyed reading this week
Some reading tips for the weekend. If you do not want to miss future posts, subscribe via Facebook, RSS or E-Mail.
» A need to walk
About the magic of walks. I’m a big fan of long walks, to clear my head, to find inspiration, to listen to podcasts. Thus I enjoyed reading this a lot.
» I used Apple’s AirDrop to troll strangers with photos of space sloths
I guess after this article, the number of pranks making use AirDrop will increase.
» Doing Business in Japan
The title sound dry and boring, but believe me, this is a long but highly interesting, insightful and even quite entertaining description of how Japanese work and business culture works. Hint: It is completely and utterly different from anything that you probably can imagine. If you are not completely uninterested in Japan, you should read it.
» The Benjamin Franklin Effect: The Surprising Psychology of How to Handle Haters
The world as we see it is not really the world how it actually is. That has consequences also about how we interact with other people.
» Germany tops USA as world’s favourite country
Considering Germany’s recent history, this top ranking is quite astonishing. Cars, success in sports and Oktoberfest can get you very far.
» Berlin’s digital exiles: where tech activists go to escape the NSA
The German capital, a place that has seen its fair share of excessive surveillance in the past, is becoming the new hot spot for those who fight today’s global surveillance.
» Typewriters are back, and we have Edward Snowden to thank
I do not believe in a bigger comeback of typewriters and I would not like it either. Typewriters are from a time when knowledge was hardly shared between people. We should not go back there. Of course if the goal is to avoid surveillance, it might be a useful tool.
» 10 million „e-Estonians“ by 2025!
This idea is so creative and unconventional: Estonia will open up its sophisticated and powerful E-Government infrastructure for foreigners, who can apply for a so called “E-Residency”, starting from December.
» The Founder’s Guide To Selling Your Company
If Internet and startup economics are your thing, then you should read this piece – no matter whether you ever will end up selling your company. But it helps in understanding some of the “games” that are going on behind the curtain when those acquisition rumors are showing up on tech blogs.
» The Spotify CEO Daniel Ek’s response to Taylor Swift
I think Ek makes a couple of really good points and reminds everybody of why music streaming services appeared in the first place: Because music piracy was killing revenue for artists and could not be stopped – until streaming startups came.
» Stockholm is the ‘most prolific’ billion-dollar startup hub behind Silicon Valley
That is pretty remarkable.
» Running a South Pole data center
Some tasks and jobs are really extraordinary (tough).
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Hi Martin, I really enjoy your weekly compilations (I don’t call it curation because I don’t like the fad word, but it certainly is curation proper, of the interesting kind).
I’m not yet half way through the “Doing Business in Japan” long read. What struck me – apart from other peculiarities that I learned about Japanese engineers’ lives – that Patrick thinks Japan is now 5–10 years behind the US on mobile/web development. I remember ~12 years ago when people (not only in Germany, but also in the US) used to say that we’re 3–5 years behind Japan on mobile because they’ve got i-mode and we haven’t got i-mode.
I never took this handwaving estimation of technological lags seriously. You can compare /adoption rates/ of a certain technology over time. Technological advancedness, on the other hand, is not a race with clear rules and success criteria because today’s tech fad (i-mode, Symbian, …) might just be replaced with something completely different that apparently comes out of nothing. These paradigm shifts have been called “Overtake without Catching Up” by the GDR commies. This notion exists in capitalism, too. They call it “creative destruction.”
So even if it looks as if the Japanese mobile industry’s lasting claim to fame are just the Emoji, and even if there is no other mobile user-facing technology than the Open Web and some Valley-controlled mobile operating systems on the horizon – the people who seem to be 5 years behind might just be 5 years ahead with the next wave. It seems unlikely that conformist salarymen will concoct that new groundbreaking technology during 6-hour-long meetings, but one never knows. Silicon Valley’s technology is kind of commoditized already, and the next big thing will have a different spin on it. Why shouldn’t Japanese mainstream engineers or misfits invent it and render mainstream Web/mobile development irrelevant?
This is just one example of the things that you posted that made me think. But it’s a pars pro toto. All of your links offer some insights into tech & startup culture & economy, into global citizenship, and other areas. Many of them are also entertaining. And sometimes you have an agenda that I can buy into (cf.: Firefox/Chrome), so you’re not just a neutral observer, but a moderate activist. I like that. I appreciate what you’re doing. Keep on doing it. Thank you.
Hey Gerrit, thanks for the feedback. I’m happy that you find the link selection valuable and that you use it for reflections like the one above. In regards to the Japan thing, I do no know if he is fully spot on, but once thing I know for sure: Recently, when visiting Tokyo again after a longer stay last year, I again was shocked about the sheer amount of feature phones that you can still see on the subway. And hardly any bigger smartphones (which are everywhere in e.g, Seoul or Hong Kong). So in regards to mobile, Japan definitely lags behind, Overall, I think the country’s reputation of being a “high-tech” nation is based on some misunderstandings.