Wtf? Lib/E: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us

O'Reilly, Tim

ISBN 10: 153845520X ISBN 13: 9781538455203

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2017

Synopsis

Silicon Valley's leading intellectual and the founder of O'Reilly Media explores the upside and the potential downsides of our future--what he calls the next economy.

Tim O'Reilly's genius is to identify and explain emerging technologies with world shaking potential--the World Wide Web, Open Source Software, Web 2.0, Open Government data, the Maker Movement, Big Data. The man who can really can make a whole industry happen, according to Executive Chairman of Google Eric Schmidt, O'Reilly has most recently focused on the future of work--AI, algorithms, and new approaches to business organization that will shape our lives. He has brought together an unlikely coalition of technologists, business leaders, labor advocates, and policy makers to wrestle with these issues. In WTF he shares the evolution of his intellectual development, applying his approach to a number of challenging issues we will face as citizens, employees, business leaders, and a nation.

What is the future when an increasing number of jobs can be performed by intelligent machines instead of people, or only done by people in partnership with those machines? What happens to our consumer based societies--to workers and to the companies that depend on their purchasing power? Is income inequality and unemployment an inevitable consequence of technological advancement, or are there paths to a better future? What will happen to business when technology-enabled networks and marketplaces are better at deploying talent than traditional companies? What's the future of education when on-demand learning outperforms traditional institutions? Will the fundamental social safety nets of the developed world survive the transition, and if not, what will replace them?

The digital revolution has transformed the world of media, upending centuries-old companies and business models. Now, it is restructuring every business, every job, and every sector of society. Yet the biggest changes are still ahead. To survive, every industry and organization will have to transform itself in multiple ways. O'Reilly explores what the next economy will mean for the world and every aspect of our lives--and what we can do to shape it.

About this title

From the Back Cover

WHAT DO SELF-DRIVING CARS, ON-DEMAND SERVICES, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, AND INCOME INEQUALITY HAVE IN COMMON? THEY ARE TELLING US, LOUD AND CLEAR, THAT WE ARE HEADING PELL-MELL TOWARD A WORLD SHAPED BY TECHNOLOGY IN WAYS THAT WE DON’T UNDERSTAND AND HAVE MANY REASONS TO FEAR.

Tim O’Reilly, one of the most prescient observers of emerging technology, dubbed “the Oracle of Silicon Valley” by Inc. magazine and “the trend spotter” by Wired, explores the burning question of how to master the technologies we create before they master us. How do we make choices today that will result in a world we want to live in? O’Reilly applies techniques his pioneering company has used to predict and make sense of past innovation waves to provide a framework for thinking about what he calls the “WTF technologies” of the twenty-first century. How are these technologies changing the nature of business, education, government, financial markets, and the economy as a whole, and how can we shape those changes?

In this powerful combination of memoir, business-strategy guide, and rallying cry, O’Reilly draws on lessons from networked platforms, including Amazon, Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Uber, and Lyft, to show how our economy and financial markets have become increasingly managed by algorithms. He believes a world ruled by machines that are hostile to humanity is not a distant possibility, and that the systems we are building today are already shaping that future.

O’Reilly makes the case that income inequality, declining upward mobility, and job loss due to technology are all the result of design choices we have made in the algorithms that manage our markets and our companies. Just as Google constantly updates its algorithms in pursuit of relevant search and ad results, and as Facebook wrestles with how to rethink its algorithms for user engagement in response to fake news, O’Reilly believes we must rewrite our economic algorithms if we wish to create a more human-centered future. It’s up to all of us, he argues, to ensure that the new technologies that shape tomorrow are cause not for worry, but for wonder.

About the Author

Tim O'Reilly is the founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, the company that has been providing the picks and shovels of learning to the Silicon Valley gold rush for the past thirty-five years. The company delivers online learning, publishes books, runs conferences, and has repeatedly shaped the discussion for each successive wave of innovation. Tim is also a partner at O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, an early stage venture firm, and is on the boards of Code for America, Maker Media, PeerJ, Civis Analytics, and PopVox.

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 153845520X
• ISBN 13: 9781538455203
• Binding: Audio CD
• Language: English