Book Review – WTF? What’s The Future And Why It’s Up To Us

In my early technology career, about 20 years ago, I found myself working every other weekend, 12 hours each day, as a member of my company’s IT Operations department. I had a lot of time on my hands during those shifts. I also had the opportunity to take advantage of a program my company offered where they would purchase one book for me each month as long as it was related to my job or my career. This is when I became aware of O’Reilly Media and their fantastic technology books. Each month, I would devour O’Reilly publications on SQL, Linux, and Microsoft certifications. When I left, I didn’t take these books with me so others in the company could take advantage of them, but my growth as a technology specialist began with those O’Reilly books.

Tim O’Reilly, the founder of O’Reilly Media, is not only a visionary entrepreneur but also a futurist. It’s how he was able to pivot his company from physical to online and eBook publishing, as well as a mutual of technology conferences. With his finger on the pulse of technology and it’s place in society, O’Reilly presents his view of what’s next with WTF? What’s The Future And Why It’s Up To Us. Unfortunately, O’Reilly, while making some good points, comes up short, seemingly looking for the answers from the same sources which helped create the problems we’re currently dealing with.

Because of what he does, O’Reilly has interacted with many of the big hands in the technology world, including Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt, and others. While I have great respect for what these tech business leaders have accomplished, I also call into question the practices they have used to become so dominant. There’s no denying that Amazon has wrought havoc on small businesses who simply cannot compete, while Facebook has based their business on promoting inflammatory social media posts. Google’s privacy issues have long been a topic of discussion. Admittedly, O’Reilly wrote WTF back in 2016, so his views may have changed since then, but I’ll wait to see if an updated edition of WTF comes out to change my opinion.

I think the thing I found most disappointing about WTF is that the man who helped coin the term “open source”, who also points out how companies like Google and Amazon are built on open source solutions, does not look to those who are developing and innovating in the open source community for answers to what the future may be. O’Reilly is also heavily involved in the maker community, which is another realm where the future looks bright. I do believe a follow up to WTF should focus on these two areas of creativity and how they can work together to build the better future we all hope for.