Wednesday, November 8, 2017
“Money is like gas during a road trip. You don’t want to run out of gas on your trip, but you’re not doing a tour of gas stations.”– Tim O’Reilly
Tim O’Reilly (@timoreilly) is one of the most fascinating polymaths I’ve ever encountered. Wired has called him “the trend spotter” in the world of tech and macrotrends.
Tim is the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, Inc. His original business plan was pretty simple: “interesting work for interesting people,” and that’s worked out pretty well. His company has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue doing everything from online learning, book publishing, running conferences, urging companies to create more value than they capture, and trying to change the world by spreading and amplifying the knowledge of innovators.
In ’93, Tim launched the first commercial website. In ’98, he organized the meeting where the term “open source software” was agreed upon and helped the business world understand its emerging importance. Tim has now turned his attention and is very focused on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its implications, the on-demand economy, and other technologies that are transforming the nature of work and the future shape of the business world.
His new book is WTF?: What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us. Enjoy!
Want to hear another conversation with a futurist? Listen to my interviews with Kevin Kelly. In this 3-part conversation, we discuss population implosions, The Long Now Foundation, organizational methods for learning, and much more. Listen to them here (stream below or right-click to download part 1 | part 2 | part 3):
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QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
Scroll below for links and show notes…
Selected Links from the Episode
- Connect with Tim O’Reilly:
Website | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn
- WTF?: What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us by Tim O’Reilly
- Cool Tools for Travel — Tim Ferriss and Kevin Kelly
- Gastrointestinal Absorption of Copper: Studies with 64Cu, 95Zr, a Whole-Body Counter, and the Scintillation Camera by Paul M. Weber, Sean O’Reilly, Myron Pollycove, and Leroy Shipley
- The San Francisco Foundation
- Code for America
- California Proposition 47, Reduced Penalties for Some Crimes Initiative
- We’re Listening — and Improving Every Day, HealthCare.gov Blog, 2013
- United States Digital Service
- Travelers’ Tales
- The Civil War by Bruce Catton
- Loving Every Child: Wisdom for Parents by Sandra Joseph
- When Nietzsche Wept: A Novel of Obsession by Irvin D. Yalom
- The Discovery of the Mind by Bruno Snell
- The Odyssey by Homer
- Frank Herbert by Timothy O’Reilly
- General Semantics
- Structural Differential
- USENIX
- The Way of Life, According to Lao Tzu by Witter Bynner
- Reality and the Nature of Perception in Wallace Stevens’ ‘An Ordinary Evening in New Haven’ by Timothy J. Segar, Segar’s Sculpture
- Dune by Frank Herbert
- Babel-17 / Empire Star by Samuel R. Delany
- Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert
- Islandia by Austin Tappan Wright
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- The Warden by Anthony Trollope
- Night Train to Lisbon: A Novel by Pascal Mercier
- The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats by W.B. Yeats
- Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts
- The Essential Rumi, New Expanded Edition by Jalal al-Din Rumi and Coleman Barks
- The Kabir Book: Forty-Four of the Ecstatic Poems of Kabir by Robert Bly
- The Collected Poems: The Corrected Edition by Wallace Stevens and Chris Beyers
- East Coker by T.S. Eliot
- Make: Technology on Your Time
- The Whole Internet User’s Guide & Catalog by Ed Krol
- The Oracle of Silicon Valley by Max Chafkin, Inc.
- It’s Not About You: The Truth About Social Media Marketing by Tim O’Reilly, LinkedIn
- Intermediate Microeconomics: A Modern Approach by Hal R. Varian
- The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
- Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy by Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian
- Containers with Alexis Madrigal Episode 4: COFFEE
- The Clothesline Paradox by Steve Baer, CoEvolution Quarterly
- Jeff Immelt Exits as GE Chairman Months Earlier Than Planned by Adam Shell, USA Today
- Makers and Takers: How Wall Street Destroyed Main Street by Rana Foroohar
- The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail by Clayton M. Christensen
- The Capitalist’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen and Derek van Bever, Harvard Business Review
- How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness by Russ Roberts
- The Social Network
- GRAIL — Detecting Cancer Early, When It Can Be Cured
- Indie.vc
- Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey
- Charlie Chan: Five Complete Novels: The House Without a Key; The Chinese Parrot; Behind That Curtain; The Black Camel; Keeper of the Keys by Earl Derr Biggers
- Trilby by George Du Maurier
- The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
- Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis
- The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
- Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope
- May 1, 1969: Fred Rogers Testifies before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications
- Planet Labs
- How I Detect Fake News by Tim O’Reilly, Medium
Show Notes
- How is Tim O’Reilly like the Cookie Monster? [08:24]
- How I managed to get a Sesame Street staff jacket. [10:11]
- Humorous stories about Tim’s mother and the petty criminal side of the family. [13:10]
- What happens when formerly illegal businesses are decriminalized and the Catch-22 faced by potential entrepreneurs barred by prior convictions. [16:16]
- What do Tim’s many siblings do? [22:46]
- What advice would Tim give to a parent whose child is bright but disinterested in school? [27:32]
- “First will what is necessary and then love what you will.” [31:17]
- Why did Tim make the transition from studying classics to writing technical manuals? [33:46]
- How Tim’s concept of perception was shaped by mentor George Simon and the ideas behind Alfred Korzybski’s General Semantics. [39:18]
- Is our consciousness evolving, or are we just getting further removed from reality? [50:35]
- How did Tim come to write a book about Dune author Frank Herbert? [54:38]
- Is the nuclear family a crime against humanity? [56:44]
- Fiction books Tim would suggest for people who are usually non-fiction purists. [1:01:10]
- Poetry recommendations and where to start. [1:05:25]
- How did Dale Dougherty and Tim recognize the potential of advertising on the World Wide Web before everyone else? [1:08:54]
- How bringing in a Sierra Club activist helped O’Reilly’s early Internet marketing efforts. [1:17:25]
- Elaboration on the Hal Varian observation: if you want to understand the future, just look at what rich people do today. [1:20:22]
- Why Tim believes we’ll never run out of jobs — provided we fix what he considers a broken economy. [1:24:39]
- How might we appropriately change the way commodities are valued beyond supply and demand? [1:29:12]
- Technology doesn’t want to eliminate jobs — it wants to solve problems. [1:33:52]
- What’s the story behind O’Reilly’s “create more value than you capture” slogan? [1:35:59]
- Tim’s take on Google’s “don’t be evil” slogan. [1:37:07]
- Are the financial markets the first rogue AI? [1:39:50]
- Money as a tool, not the object; the danger society faces when the most rewarded provide the least value. [1:47:15]
- Why does Tim read bestsellers from bygone eras? [1:57:13]
- How has Tim coped with challenges to his normal optimism? [2:04:43]
- Parting advice. [2:10:09]
People Mentioned
Posted on: November 8, 2017.
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