WTF? What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us

From Do Lectures: “100 must-read books of 2018”

“With new technologies seeming to appear every week, how do we negotiate the future in a tech-driven world? Tim gives us some sagely wisdom.”

From opensource.com: “A summer reading list for open organization enthusiasts”

“Since I first saw Tim O’Reilly speak at a conference many years ago, I’ve always felt he had a good grasp of what's happening not only in open source but also in the broader space of digital technology. O’Reilly possesses the great ability to read the tea leaves, to make connections, and (based on those observations), to ‘predict’ potential outcomes. In the book, he calls this map making.

“While this book is about what the future could hold (with a particular filter on the impacts of artificial intelligence), it really boils down to the fact that humans are shaping the future. The book opens with a pretty extensive history of free and open source software, which I think many in the community will enjoy. Then it dives directly into the race for automated vehicles—and why Uber, Lyft, Tesla, and Google are all pushing to win…”

From Apolitical “Reading list for government innovators: The 12 essential books and reports”

“If you’re gripped by hysteria over automation and job-stealing-robots, Tim O’Reilly’s book is for you. The leading Silicon Valley thinker believes that government and business must harness technology as a solution to intractable problems, rather simply use it as a cost-cutting tool. But in order to do this, government must figure out how to shape it, regulate it and ensure it reflects our values. Big data, sensors and artificial intelligence could create the economy of the future—but if we fail to take ownership of technology, O’Reilly warns, we’ll fall prey to another period of war and instability.”

From Shift Forum Reads: “WTF is wrong with capitalism? In capitalism, we’ve built an artificial intelligence that’s badly in need of a reboot, argues longtime tech observer Tim O’Reilly.”

“As I read, an idea emerged which runs through the work: When it comes to your work, you’re either making things, or you’re making money. You can certainly make money while you’re making things, and perhaps things get made if you focus on making money. But this essential choice is at the heart of the book. As a society, should we value creating products and services that make the world a bit better, or should we value creating money, and assume the rest follows? This question is particularly relevant when considering technology and its impact on our economy — as O’Reilly points out: ‘We are layering on new kinds of magic that are slowly fading into the ordinary… will we use it to make a better world? Or will we use it to amplify the worst features of today’s world?’

“This is an idea I’d been thinking about for some time, but O’Reilly’s book has a way of nudging things into the light: He takes sincere offense with the way our tech-driven capitalistic system has developed, and spends a lot of his book laying out a case for why we have to change our approach to how we run our companies and our governments. ‘There is a profound failure of imagination and will in much of today’s economy,’ he rails. ‘Policy makers seem helpless, assuming that the course of technology is inevitable, rather than something we must shape.’

“Yes, yes, yes!”

From Barron’s: “Here are the technology trends that really matter”

“People often ask what book they should read to get a better handle on current technology trends. My answer: There’s no better place to start the new year than with the recently published WTF? by Tim O’Reilly… He’s written WTF? in an approachable voice, weaving together conversations with dozens of individuals, from one-on-one chats with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to exchanges with Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos… WTF? is rich in observations large and small, many leading back to how humans will or won’t use technology well.”

Included on Bloomberg’s list of “Must reads of 2017”

From Boing Boing: “Tim O’Reilly’s WTF? A book that tells us how to keep the technology baby and throw out the Big Tech bathwater”

“WTF? is a book about technology as it was, as it is, and as it could be. It is told from the perspective of someone who has been personally present at the most important moments in the fast-paced history of tech, and who played a significant role in those moments. It’s a rare and important piece of criticism that inspires even as it dissects. Please do read this book.”

From the Mercury News: Books by the Bay

“As the founder of O’Reilly Media, Inc., Tim O’Reilly takes a wide-angle view of the industry. His latest book, a readable mix of memoir, industry analysis and strategy guide, considers the ways new technologies are changing the nature of business, education, government and the economy. Things that once made us say ‘WTF?,’ he opines, now are ‘well on their way to being the stuff of daily life.’ His outlook is pretty upbeat, even as he envisions a world ruled by machines hostile to humanity.”

From the Financial Times: “WTF? What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us, by Tim O’Reilly—A longstanding Silicon Valley thinker suggests ways to keep humans and tech aligned”

“In his punchy and provocative book, O’Reilly argues that our financial markets are currently operating just like the runaway AI we most fear, incentivising corporate bosses to do bad things and destroy society… What’s the Future is an insightful and heartfelt plea, daring us to reimagine a better economy and society… What’s the Future is a jaunty read with a compelling narrative of how technology interweaves with the real world. If it can cajole even a few tech titans to dwell on the social and political impact of what they do then it will have served a useful purpose.”

From Ars Technica: “Tim O’Reilly on why the future probably won’t be all that terrible”

“Tim’s book is a feast. Part memoir and part forward-leaning manifesto, it’s full of contrarian insights and fresh lenses for framing tech’s ever-baffling trajectory. All is backed up with data, facts, and first-hand reports from Tim’s decades on the front lines. And it’s steeped in a level-headed positivity that elegantly rebuts the sudden knee-jerk pessimism of a community that (let’s face it) has it pretty good, compared to most humans across history.”

From The Family: “Haven’t You Read Tim O’Reilly?”

“I’ve just finished reading Tim O’Reilly’s WTF? What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us. In the current anti-tech atmosphere, some may deride the publication as a self-serving effort by a Silicon Valley guru. My view is precisely the opposite: this is a book that is both insightful and unprecedented in its scope, ambition, and potential impact.

“It’s always been our view at The Family that tech entrepreneurs cannot succeed if institutions around them don’t change at the appropriate pace. But so far there have been very few Silicon Valley insiders willing to step out of their comfort zone and tackle the tough challenges of technology colliding with policy, governance, and institutional innovation.

“This is why WTF? is a breakthrough. With this book… Tim O’Reilly is joining the thin crowd of policy-aware thinkers in the tech industry. And he’s reminding us that our future (the future of jobs, of democracy, of our social compact) depends on imagining new institutions rather than simply waiting for technology to dictate its terms…”

From ImpactAlpha: “WTF? Programming the master algorithm for the future we want”

“This time the entrepreneur and tech seer’s dispatches go beyond Silicon Valley, beyond technology and even beyond the good jobs and shared economy agenda O’Reilly has championed in his WTF conferences over the last few years. O’Reilly takes on the current logic of capital markets themselves… O’Reilly’s diagnosis is intriguing enough, but the real contribution of the book is in his outlines of an alternative. Drawing on tech history over the last few decades, he sketches a logic that could conceivably save ‘the market’ from itself.”

From FairPay Zone: “WTF? A New, Better, Warm-Blooded Capitalism—Linking Profit to Human Values”

“Tim draws on his established position as thought leader with ties to the increasingly broad range of ‘alpha geeks’ and entrepreneurs that have shaped our digital world, and his perspective as a publisher and communicator concerned about the broad human effects of technology on our civilization. He richly explores the double-edged effects of technologies such as platforms, automation, algorithms, and AI, and how they seem to be making life worse in many ways, even as they work miracles… Through a wide range of contexts and examples, Tim suggests that we need to change the rules and incentives of our markets—not only markets for goods and services but also financial markets—and layers of internal and governmental rules that regulate them—to better address the conflicts between people and profit, to turn the invisible hand to guide corporations fairly.”

From CTOvision

“WTF?: What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us is a fantastic guide and overview of the tech and business megatrends sweeping over society… This book gets our strongest possible endorsement for anyone who wants to play a role in shaping the future of our tech enabled world (and that should be all of us).”

Booklist

“Self-described ‘technology evangelist’ O’Reilly poses an interesting question: Is there a way to acknowledge that technology is taking over our daily lives without being afraid of it? To put it another way, How are we to integrate new technologies—self-driving cars, for example, or robots that are so smart they are replacing humans in the workplace—without feeling like we’ve lost control of our lives? Well, O’Reilly says, we’re kind of doing that already. He cites numerous examples of technological breakthroughs that seemed ominous at first but now are taken for granted: Google Maps, the iPhone, even the Internet. The worrisome or frightening has become the humdrum, something whose sudden absence would be a major inconvenience to us. So, rather than feeling confused or scared by new technologies, we should embrace them; rather than search for ways to exclude them from our lives, we should be in search of a harmonious existence. For technophobes, this is a comforting and user-friendly book; for technophiles, a celebration of the tremendous potential of new tech.”