Tim O’Reilly – The Trend Spotter
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“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!
Tim O'Reilly - The Trend Spotter
https://rss.art19.com/episodes/00ba562c-2ed1-4258-93c2-04d525c75349.mp3
Listen to it on iTunes.
Stream by clicking here.
Download as an MP3 by right-clicking here and choosing “save as.”
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):
Ep 25: Kevin Kelly - WIRED Co-Founder, Polymath, Most Interesting Man In The Worldhttps://rss.art19.com/episodes/6f89ca68-cfff-4e64-9230-ea3bcdcad3cf.mp3
Ep 26: Kevin Kelly (Part 2) - WIRED Co-Founder, Polymath, Most Interesting Man In The World?https://rss.art19.com/episodes/e77c8948-ef94-48a2-ab97-cb3c114ebb28.mp3
Ep 27: Kevin Kelly (Part 3) - WIRED Co-Founder, Polymath, Most Interesting Man In The World?https://rss.art19.com/episodes/29d135c2-52c2-4253-a7a1-4c084d6893d3.mp3
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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
Kevin Kelly
Cookie Monster
Leroy Shipley
Sean O’Reilly (father)
Anne O’Reilly
Fred Blackwell
Jennifer Pahlka
Barack Obama
Sean O’Reilly
James O’Reilly
Frank O’Reilly
Bruce Catton
Meara O’Reilly
Arwen O’Reilly
Irvin D. Yalom
Friedrich Nietzsche
Sigmund Freud
George Simon
Homer
Odysseus
Socrates
Plato
Christina O’Reilly
Lao Tzu
Frank Herbert
Alfred Korzybski
Sri Aurobindo
Josh Waitzkin
Reid Hoffman
Eric Raymond
Christine Peterson
Wallace Stevens
Dick Riley
Samuel Delaney
Austin Tappan Wright
Jane Austen
Anthony Trollope
W.B. Yeats
Rolf Potts
Jalal al-Din Rumi
Coleman Barks
Robert Bly
Kabir
Stephen Mitchell
T.S. Eliot
Dale Dougherty
Bob Scheifler
Tim Berners-Lee
Michael Kosta Loukides
Pei-Yuan Wei
Brian Erwin
Hal Varian
Andrew McAfee
Erik Brynjolfsson
Carl Shapiro
Alexis Madrigal
Stewart Brand
Jeff Immelt
Warren Buffett
Rana Foroohar
Donald Trump
Bernie Sanders
Eric Schmidt
Clayton Christensen
Mark Zuckerberg
Walt Mossberg
Steve Ballmer
Russ Roberts
William Redington Hewlett
David Packard
Gordon Moore
Andrew Grove
Jeff Huber
Elon Musk
Bryce Roberts
Zane Gray
Charles Dickens
George Du Maurier
Svengali
Ken Kesey
Thomas Pynchon
Michael Lewis
Fred Rogers
