What we read this week (4 October)

Understanding the cloud, a bust making waves, a bad decision by Tim Berners-Lee and more in this edition of the Weekly Reads

Quotes of the week

Vision is worth exactly nothing without timing.

–Horace Dediu

Articles of the week

  • How to see through the cloud
    James Bridle put together a tutorial that helps you to better understand the actual infrastructure of the internet that has been obscured by the marketing term ‘the cloud.’
  • The Silk Road Bust
    Lots of attention this week around the end of one of the most fascinating stories of the “deep web:” Silk Road. Ars Technica has a lot. But also look statements by the EFF and Tor about how anonymizing technology is not to blame here.
  • Bitcoin’s role in the future of micropayments
    Here’s another aspect of what becomes possible with Bitcoin. Micropayments have been a topic for almost as long as there is a commerce on the internet. Nobody quite solved it, because of the fees associated with using credit cards. Bitcoin, potentially, can help solve this issue.
  • Time to Fight Against a DRM’d Web – by Forking It
    The W3C including its director Tim Berners-Lee are seriously looking at including DRM features into the next web standard. So not cool. That’s why Glyn Moody is suggesting we work around that, which has worked before when the W3C tried to push XHTML.
  • Inside the Underground Spam Machine That’s Overrunning Social Media
    Meghan Neal looks at different studies and reports to reveal the $200 million industry behind those link spam tweets and chain-mail messages on Facebook.

Author: Johannes

Johannes is a strategist and consultant for digital communications. His work is informed by his experience of working with brands like Deutsche Telekom, MTV, Postbank, Maggi and Nike and by his insatiable appetite for finding the bigger patterns behind current developments in technology and science. Holding a diploma in Media System Design, Johannes is a regular speaker at web and marketing conferences like Republica and the Social Media Summit.