Tim O'Reilly interview - O'Reilly on books (part 3)

 

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By Alun Williams

Posted on 15 Jul 2003 at 10:55

Overall, our vision is to continue doing what we do. Our mission is to 'change the world by capturing the knowledge of innovators.' And we hope that we'll be continuing to do that.

More specifically, which subject areas in computing do you expect to be popular over the next few years? i.e. DRM, wireless networking...

O'Reilly: Wireless networking is definitely going to be huge. Nicholas Negroponte pointed out years ago that at some point, everything carried over wires (telephony etc.) would go wireless, and everything wireless (television, radio) would go wired, since wires were good for taking data to fixed locations, while wireless is good for data aimed at people, who are inherently mobile.

Not just 802.11 but cellular networks and other new technologies on the horizon are going to be really important. In addition to books like 802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide, and Building Wireless Community Networks, we expect to publish a number of other wireless related books.

DRM is a fundamentally bad idea. I don't have any plans to publish in that area.

While Web services books haven't been a huge success yet, I believe (as I outlined above) that the move to 'the Internet operating system' (the world in which the network is the computer) is one of the biggest changes we've all faced. So there's going to be a huge upsurge of retraining to deal with that area.

And of course, Linux, MySQL and other open source topics are going to grow in importance.

And in addition, digital photography, digital video, and other types of rich media are going to be an increasingly important part of all of our lives.

To finish on a personal note, I believe you like reading science-fiction and historical fiction in your leisure time? What is your favourite book, and what are you reading now?

O'Reilly: My favourite book....now that's a hard question. There are a set of books that are very important to me.

Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching, in the Witter Bynner translation (The Way of Life According to Lao Tzu). Islandia, by Austin Tappan Wright (a utopian fantasy written in the 1930s). The ideal of a slower, more thoughtful life.

Rissa Kerguelen, by F.M. Busby, a science fiction novel about the way that small businesses can play a disruptive, counter-cultural role in a world increasingly dominated by large corporations. (This book was an inspiration to me when I was starting my company.)

Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond series of historical novels about the 16th century world of Scotland, France, and commerce around the Mediterranean. In addition to being fascinating views of bits of history cleverly woven together, these books have a lot of great perspective on the nature of leadership. These are all 'foundation' books for me.

What am I reading now? Thackeray's Vanity Fair. Why? Trollope (whom I also enjoy) thought that this was one of the greatest English novels, and when my daughter read it and loved it, I thought I'd better add it to my repertoire.

Other books I've read recently that I've really enjoyed:

Air Guitar, by Dave Hickey. (The subtitle is 'Essays on Art and Democracy.' To understand why it's so great, you need to read it. Wonderful perspectives from the art world that can be applied to other aspects of our culture.)

Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson. Not one of my favourite science fiction authors, but I really liked this one. Loved some of the images - the 'cool hunter' with allergy to overstated branding.