O'Reilly: Stop throwing sheep, do something worthy

NEW YORK--Tim O'Reilly, founder of O'Reilly Media, is known as a futurist, but his keynote address on Thursday morning at the Web 2.0 Expo was heavy on the realism in the wake of sobering news from Wall Street.

Web 2.0 evangelist Tim O'Reilly addresses the crowd at the last Web 2.0 Expo, in April.

(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET News)

"(These are) pretty depressing times in a lot of ways," O'Reilly said in an address that first had looked like it would simply be a starry-eyed discussion of enterprise opportunities for Web 2.0. "And you have to conclude, if you look at the focus of a lot of what you call 'Web 2.0,' the relentless focus on advertising-based consumer models, lightweight applications, we may be living in somewhat of a bubble, and I'm not talking about an investment bubble. (It's) a reality bubble."

Global warming. The U.S. losing its edge in science and technology. A growing income gap. "And what are the best and the brightest working on?" O'Reilly asked, displaying a slide of the popular Facebook application SuperPoke, which invites you to, among other things, "throw sheep" at your friends.

"Do you see a problem here?" he posed, showing another slide of the popular iPhone app "iBeer," which simulates chugging a pint. "You have to ask yourself, are we working on the right things?"

He brought up examples like Google.org, the Omidyar Network, and even small companies that have decided to take on social and political challenges rather than the trendy social-network craze of the week. "Business is the engine of innovation," O'Reilly said. "I really believe in markets, and I believe in the power we all have to build great companies that change things."

As for the financial-services industry, O'Reilly implied that in a big sense, firms had it coming. "If you look at what went wrong on Wall Street, this is an industry that, in its heart, parades a lot of value," he said. "Liquidity in markets is critical. But if you look at the last decade...these Wall Street firms captured a lot more value than they were creating."

There's an inherent irony in what O'Reilly said, given the fact that massive conferences like the Web 2.0 Expo are packed with the trendspeak and hype that birthed SuperPoke-like entertainment, and certainly aren't helping the environment by distributing tons of press kits and swag--not to mention flying in hundreds of attendees in a massive spurt of carbon emissions.

To be fair, O'Reilly Media has been printing fewer event programs and encouraging conference goers to recycle, and it has used carpeting made of post-consumer material.

There is clearly a lot that needs to change, and perhaps the tech industry trend of large-scale conferences is part of it. We'll see whether Silicon Valley's leaders and moguls are willing to do what they think is right, rather than what they think is profitable.

But O'Reilly encouraged the audience to start small, and he offered them their first challenge: register to vote.

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[gagahput3ra]

Well, from my point of view, those throwing sheep stuff, microblogging, news network & corporate blogging are ACTUALLY helping to solve most of our modern problems in modern civilizations, which is lack of communication between top and the bottom. I don't know if i putting the right words here, but Twitter, Plurk, Facebook, Friendster, are ACTUALLY a tool to create an influences, to make people AWARE. Yes, i don't know if some of these tools actually work, you know you can't say that if you have one bad apple on your bucket that ten the whole bucket's ruined, but i guess that web 2.0 IS a bubble, and the one that will survive is the one that actually is the right and useful one. The other? DEAD POOL!!! That's why interweb is just like life. Lots of crap, lots of good stuff. And people mostly say bad things about both of it. but in the end, people finally aware that what they get is crap.

[mikehill33]

I wonder how many times he RETWEETED everything he said?

[teeraa]

Here's a site that's not about throwing sheep!

http://www.govit.com

You can vote on legislation, and send your vote directly to Congress. Finally!

[CaptainChunk]

I think Tim has a point. I don't think the best the brightest are only working on "time wasters", but I think what he is driving at is that the best and the brightest need to figure out ways to get more out of the "time wasters".

I think that will come with time. Maybe something like throwing a sheep costs $0.01 that goes to charity or something similar.

Brian
http://www.konnects.com

[inachu]

Is throwing sheep at your friends a pc game?