WTF? What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us

O'Reilly spent three decades at the center of the open-source and web movements — coining "Web 2.0," publishing the books that taught a generation of programmers, and convening the conferences where industry directions were debated. This book distills that accumulated experience into an argument about how technology companies should think about their responsibilities. He is particularly sharp on the idea that platform design decisions are political decisions: the rules an algorithm enforces, the incentives a marketplace creates, and the metrics a company optimizes for all have consequences that extend far beyond the product itself. O'Reilly draws on his personal relationships with figures from Linus Torvalds to Jeff Bezos, grounding abstract arguments in specific institutional histories. The book is most useful not as prediction but as a framework for thinking about the relationship between technological capability and social obligation.