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Watching the Alpha Geeks

Tim O’Reilly

O’Reilly Media, Inc.www.oreilly.com

CIO Strategy ExchangeNovember 5, 2008

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We’re best known as a book publisher

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What We Really Do At O'Reilly

Change the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators

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How we do it

•Find interesting technologies and people innovating from the edge

•Amplify their effectiveness by spreading the information needed for others to follow them.

•Books

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How we do it

•Find interesting technologies and people innovating from the edge

•Amplify their effectiveness by spreading the information needed for others to follow them.

•Books, Conferences

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How we do it

•Find interesting technologies and people innovating from the edge

•Amplify their effectiveness by spreading the information needed for others to follow them.

•Books, Conferences, Online

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Some Examples

• First books on Linux and Perl - 1991• First book on the internet, covered WWW when there were only 200 web sites - 1992

• Launched first commercial web site, 1993• First advocacy about web services - 1997• Organized meeting where term “open source” was adopted - 1998

• Coined term Web 2.0 to describe rules for new internet platform - 2004

• Make: celebrates the new DIY - 2006

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Watch the Alpha Geeks

Rob Flickenger and his potato chip can antenna

• New technologies first exploited by hackers, then entrepreneurs, then platform players

• Three examples– Wireless community networks

predict universal Wi-Fi– Screen scraping predicts web services and the internet as platform– “The pedal powered internet” predicts new focus on energy

"The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet."

--William Gibson

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Closer to home...

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“A PC on every desk and in every home”

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“The PC is just a toy.”

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In 1998, search had largely been written off as a business opportunity...

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“Organize all the world’s information”

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Hackers Like Big Challenges

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Ten Things That Will Rock Your World

Tim O’Reilly

O’Reilly Media, Inc.www.oreilly.com

CIO Strategy ExchangeNovember 5, 2008

1. “Harnessing Collective Intelligence”

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Web 2.0 is about finding meaning in user-generated data,

and turning that meaning into real-time user-facing services

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OpenCV: Computer Vision

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2. The End of the Relational Database Paradigm

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3. Re-mix Culture Goes Mainstream

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4. Disaster Relief and Social Action

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How can I make any difference?

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"A victory small enough to be organized is too small to be decisive."

--Eliot Janeway, Struggle for Survival

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Tracking Illegal Deforestation in Brazil with Google Earth

49 Source: New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/19/world/americas/19brazil.html

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4. Energy and Global Warming

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“We’re F**ked!”

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5. Government (and Business) Transparency

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7. Hacking Gets Physical

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The Sensor Revolution

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VCR Cat Feeder

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8. Open Source Hardwareand the future of manufacturing

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The Power Supply for One Laptop Per Child

Colin Bulthaup, Potenco: “We used to get mockups. Now we get new working prototypes on a weekly basis.”

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9. Instrumenting the World

We are moving out of the world in which people typing on keyboards will drive collective intelligence applications. Increasingly, applications are driven by new kinds of sensors.

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Natalie Jeremijenko’s Feral Robot Dogs

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3D beijing

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What’s Next?

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11. Body and Mind Hacking

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12. Synthetic Biology

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For More Information

• What is Web 2.0? http://www.oreillynet.com/go/web2 • http://tim.oreilly.com• http://radar.oreilly.com• http://www.makezine.com

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