Friday, October 10, 2008

Challenging the next generation (and this one) to get serious - Tech guru Tim O'Reilly again points the way.

Tim O'Reilly is one of the main pillars of this blog's beginning. I am, admittedly, still on the periphery of the techno-world. Before starting this blog, the Firefox browser's bookmark button was about as adventurous as I got in the Web 2.0 world. I was also far more aware of Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions, as a former psychology major, than I was of any technological revolutions going on the Internet.

However, when I decided to use the Internet to explore Paradigm Shifts, it was inevitable that Tim O'Reilly's - Open Source Paradigm Shift would be at the top of the pile. O'Reilly's ideas on processes and organizational relationships, though focused on computer technology, still appealed to my organizational psychology perspective. My interest in exploring what Web 2.0 offered in regards to tools for gathering, organizing, communicating and applying knowledge was enhanced. That started a process that led me to create Milestones for a New Millennium.

Now my quest has discovered dozens of different ways to be make positive contributions to the world using the Internet, as well as discovering numerous sources of interesting and educational material. Yet, I am still encouraged when I read today in the Los Angeles Times a story by Los Angeles Times Staff Writer Jessica Guynn that Tech guru Tim O'Reilly challenges next generation to get serious.


SAN FRANCISCO - ; Silicon Valley insiders call it the O'Reilly Radar: Tim O'Reilly's uncanny ability to spot a technology revolution before it happens. But lately the entrepreneur, investor and book publisher has been busier trying to incite the next one.

The entrepreneur, investor and book publisher urges young entrepreneurs and engineers to stop making silly software and start making a real difference in the world.

What I appreciated in the article was Tim O'Reilly's perspective ... that Silicon Valley has strayed from the passion and idealism that fuel innovation to instead follow what he calls the "mad pursuit of the buck with stupider and stupider ideas."

Flush with money and opportunity following the post-dot-com resurgence, he says, some entrepreneurs have cocooned in a "reality bubble," insulated from poverty, disease, global warming and other problems that are gripping the planet. He argues that they should follow the model of some of the world's most successful technology companies, including Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., which sprang from their founders' efforts to "work on stuff that matters."

Visit latimes.com

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