Talk by Tim O'Reilly at Stanford EE380 on November 19, 2008

1. Watching
the Alpha Geeks
Tim O’Reilly
O’Reilly Media, Inc.
www.oreilly.com
Stanford EE380
November 19, 2008

2. We’re best known as a book publisher
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3. What We Really Do At O'Reilly
Change the world by spreading the
knowledge of innovators
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4. 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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5. 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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6. 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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7. 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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8. Watch the Alpha Geeks
• 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
Rob Flickenger and his potato chip can antenna
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9. quot;The future is here. It's just not
evenly distributed yet.quot;
--William Gibson
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10. Closer to home...
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11. 11

12. “A PC on every desk and in every home”
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13. “The PC is just a toy.”
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14. In 1998, search had largely been written
off as a business opportunity...
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15. “Organize all the world’s information”
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16. Hackers Like Big Challenges
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17. Ten Things That Will
Rock Your World
Tim O’Reilly
O’Reilly Media, Inc.
www.oreilly.com

18. 1. “Harnessing Collective
Intelligence”
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22. 22

23. 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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29. 29

30. 30

31. OpenCV: Computer Vision
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32. 2. Technology for Social Action
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33. 33

34. How can I make any difference?
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35. quot;A victory small enough to be
organized is too small to be
decisive.quot;
--Eliot Janeway,
Struggle for Survival
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37. 37

38. 38

39. Tracking Illegal Deforestation in Brazil
with Google Earth
Source: New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/19/world/americas/19brazil.html
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40. 40

41. 41

42. 3. The End of the
Relational Database Paradigm
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44. 44

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48. 48

49. 49

50. 50

51. 4. Energy and Global Warming
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52. 52

53. “We’re F**ked!”
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55. 55

56. 56

57. 57

58. 5. Government (and Business)
Transparency
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60. 60

61. 61

62. 62

63. 63

64. 6. Re-mix Culture Goes Mainstream
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65. 65

66. 66

67. 7. Hacking Gets Physical
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68. The Sensor Revolution
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69. VCR Cat Feeder
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70. 70

71. 8. Open Source Hardware
and the future of manufacturing
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73. 73

74. 74

75. 75

76. 76

77. 77

78. 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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79. Natalie Jeremijenko’s Feral Robot Dogs
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80. 80

81. 81

82. 3D beijing
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83. What’s Next?
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84. 84

85. 85

86. 11. Body and Mind Hacking
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94. 94

95. 12. Synthetic Biology
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98. 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
• http://www.oreilly.com
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