Information Sources

One of my favorite classes at Stanford is ME410:Innovation and Foresight. In this class, we learn how to build mental models to understand breakthrough technologies and how they transition from lab to customer over time. I was surprised by one of my key takeaways from this class. When trying to explore new areas like the future of alternative foods, sustainable energy, or consumer AR experiences, I realized: It's pretty hard to find good quality inflormation on the internet. There are endless ad infested websites with mediocre content. But, there are only so many sources worth your time. Our understanding of the world is only as good as the information we get. And, we should be able to do everything better if we have a more accurate mental model of the world. So, it's worth the time to seek the best sources. I'm dedicating this page to collecting the most useful sources I've found.

This collection is currently organized into two categories:

  1. General sources
  2. Stanford affiliate sources

1. General Sources:

  1. Libgen If you haven't heard of Libgen yet, check it out right away. It's a website that lets you download pretty much any book for free. It's probably good to have an adblocker while using this website. 2.HackerNews This is the homepage of the internet for computer science nerds. Useful for getting a sense of how people are using CS.
  2. ProductHunt This is a daily collection of newly launched products. Useful for getting a sense of current basic consumer / b2b SaaS products. 4.Protocol This is a useful general tech publication. 5.Rest of world This covers tech trends outside of the US.
  3. Economist This is probably the only source you need to keep up to date about anything politics related in the world. Stanford students get access for free here.
  4. MIT Tech Review This covers new technologies in an accessible way.

To Do: Add newsletters

2. Stanford Sources

If you are a Stanford student, don't drop out because you get a lot of free access to useful sources.

Stanford students get free access to some cool journals:

You also get free access to news sources like:

The GSB Library also maintains a good list of research guides and a list of research databases/sets. The Med School also provides a strong list of free resources on its library page here.

I also started alt accounts on Instagram to follow more visual topics for fashion and arts since I feel like social media is where people share more of this type of work than on publications or blogs. It's been working pretty well for fashion but I will write back here once I have more useful thoughts.

To Do: Add challenge sites and programs Problem sites:

3. Startup Sources

People lists?