Here is what to read this weekend

Wow, that week surely went fast. I didn’t even realize it and Friday just showed up. Good news is that I have some great stuff for you to read this weekend. A lot of it is about tech, but one story in particular has nothing to do with tech. It is about being knowing what is enough. It is my favorite of the week. It is about a man who makes a tiny house. 

MUST READS

• The cloud and other dangerous metaphors: Online privacy, data and news streams, data-collection are a few of the gnarly topics of our times. For The Atlantic writers Tim Hwang and Karen Levy, it is about language choices.
• Smells like teen spirit: Microsoft has been making moves that are putting the future of the company in the hands of teens, writes Andy Swan. Hint: Minecraft and Xbox. Interesting argument!
• Welcome to nowheresville: Nicholas Carr, who has just released a new book, The Glass Cage, bemoans the automated/assisted driving culture. Digital maps, GPS and other navigation devices have taken our ability to find our way. If you have been in an Uber lately, you can actually see the loss of common (navigation) sense.
• Unbundling of commercial banks: Don’t let the boring title fool you. Tanay Jaipuria has done a great job of mapping all the startups that are trying to eat away at the large commercial bank services. I am glad they are, for anyone who has tried to do business with a big bank knows that they quickly remind you how little you really are.
• How Uber’s autonomous cars will destroy 10 million jobs and reshape the economy by 2025: I admit, I got suckered by the headline, but was able to read the article and found it well reasoned. The 10 million jobs lost is an argument I don’t quite buy. (Here is my column on Fastcompany.com about self driving cars.)
• Blackout and the return of Michael Mann: The dark art of hacking is subject of this new movie by The Insider & Heat director, Mann. The 71-year-old talks about his first movie in almost five years.
• Tiny house: It is a wonderful story of a man who overcomes his wanderlust and stays put in Boulder, Colorado. He builds a tiny house. The lessons of that tiny house are simple — we don’t need more, we don’t need big and instead we need just enough. It is a wonderful story, and surprisingly it runs on the content portion of a retailer’s blog.

Bonus Features:

• What’s the future of books?
• Who started the fire: Are burning peatlands causing haze in South East Asia?
• The long, strange purgatory of Casey Kasem!

Quick links:

• Jay-Z wants to compete with Spotify.
• Be careful of what you emoji.
• Posting too many selfies says you are a…
• Tech industry is completely ridiculous.
• Why I am a little sour on crowdfunding.

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