For the first time in 100 years, the economy is literally shutting down in order to restart again — but the systems that come back to life are not going to be like the ones we knew before. Like rebooting a computer with a new operating system, our society will function in fundamentally different ways.
Every major crisis gets a name: The Great Depression, The Great Recession, The Dot-Com Bust. I believe this one might just become known as The Great Reboot. This book is about how you can navigate the post-pandemic world of technology and society of The Great Reboot.
My name is Arnobio Morelix and I am the author of Rebooted, the first book ever on how to navigate the massive shifts in technology and the economy in the decades after the pandemic.
My hope for the book is that I can help people — including myself — understand what is happening with the Great Reboot and offer tools to navigate it.
In this book, you'll learn about the ways in which technology and society are shaping each other, including insights around:
Why Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, thinks the internet is broken and how we can think about fixing it.
What Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, thinks tech creators need to take into account today that they did not in the past; and how the all-new framework of the Four Quadrants of Unintended Consequences of Tech can help you address Vint’s challenge.
Why the world is getting increasingly weird: If you imagine 2016 as a baseline for a very strange year, it's easy to see how it has just gotten stranger since then and we present how the little-known concept of the Pacing Dilemma explains this phenomenon.
How the long-running transition of a major share of the economy from analog to digital became dramatically accelerated, with shifts we expected might take 10 years happening in 10 weeks and how the simple economics of the Great Reboot can help you understand the timing of the changes and what comes next.
You will love this book if you are a founder or technology creator (or are interested in these worlds) and you deeply care about the broader impact of technology on society: no matter if you are in a startup or a big corporation.
There were many inspirations for this book, but an event on February 2, 2020 still sticks in my mind. On that day, I received a strange message from a business contact in China. We had a trip to Beijing scheduled 10 days later to discuss a business partnership, and our hosts sent an email of a couple of lines saying something to the effect of "Do not come to Beijing now due to the coronavirus situation, and we urge you to reconsider your trip to Seoul." South Korea was our stop before China. The dates all blur in our minds today, but on February 2, there were fewer than 200 reported COVID-19 cases confirmed in the world outside of China. The United States (the country with most cases at the time of this writing) had fewer than 10 confirmed COVID-19 cases in total, versus the millions it has today.
This event got me on the path of digging deep into the topic, and I started the Great Reboot Project, along with a website and early writing, in March 2020. I am continuing on this journey to make sense (and take action) around major global changes of historical proportions. It has been thrilling and I hope you join me.
We had a successful campaign on Indiegogo where it became #1 trending new project on the platform within 24 hours of launch, and later again during the campaign. I hope you join me in supporting and sharing the message of the Great Reboot.
The Rebooted book is written in three parts:
Part 1 is about the Three Waves of the Great Reboot and The Economics of Pandemics, with a framework on how to think about the unfolding changes over time, and how to prepare for them. I preview some of these in my columns for Inc. Magazine, so you can check that out if you are curious.
Part 2 is about the Circles of Impact of the Great Reboot: in particular the macro context of what is happening in the circles of Home, Work, City, and World.
Finally, Part 3 is what we call the New Operating System Toolkit, focused on what you can do about all of this. The Toolkit is targeted to founders and technology creators — both people and companies — that want to navigate this new world in the most informed way possible.
What we are creating here is a book that is different from anything else you might read on the topic for three key reasons:
First, it is at the intersection of technology, economics, and policy — my three professional areas. I work as an executive at Startup Genome, a Silicon Valley company, I’m a UC Berkeley-trained data scientist with a background in economics (studied in the University of Kansas, in the American Midwest), and in my professional history I have created research used by senators, governors, mayors, and the White House. I have worked directly with current and former government ministers as well as policymakers at the state and city level. You can read about each of these three areas separately, but they intersect in really important ways, especially in The Great Reboot.
Second, it brings a global perspective. As a native Brazilian living in the U.S. and working with organizations in every continent of the world, I am working here to tell this as the truly global story that it is.
Third, it is both long-term and action-oriented. The book is about how to navigate not only the changes that will happen in the next 1 to 2 years, but the next 1 to 2 decades. This is a point I want to make crystal clear: this is not a book about the pandemic. Rather, it is about the long shadow of The Great Reboot and its aftermath. In particular, it is about how to create technology responsibly in this new world.
Arnobio Morelix is a Silicon Valley-based executive working at the intersection of technology, economics, and policy. His work and analysis has been featured widely in national and global media, including the New York Times, The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, and the BBC, among others. He's been a frequent public speaker, with presentations at South by Southwest, the Federal Reserve Bank, the OECD, and many others. Arnobio has advised, worked with, and presented to CEOs, founders, current and former government ministers, and top academics.
Arnobio is Chief Innovation Officer at Startup Genome, leading a global team researching and advising governments and private organizations across 35 countries on their innovation policies. He also serves roles at Stanford University (as a contributing data science expert for a research initiative focused on inclusion and entrepreneurship) and Inc. Magazine (as Chief Data Scientist).
Arnobio is the author of The Great Reboot, a book about how to navigate the post-pandemic world of technology and society. For more information, you can connect with Arnobio at arnobio@berkeley.edu, LinkedIn, or Twitter (@amorelix).
Arnobio and his work have been featured in:
A project like this is a big lift, especially in the ambitious timelines we set for ourselves. I have brought together a world-class team to make this a reality:
Sean Ludwig, a technology and business writer/editor, formerly Communications Director at Tech:NYC, and reporter for VentureBeat, working with me on writing, editing, and strategy
Lubin Arora, a long-term collaborator, with consulting and research experience at places like Startup Genome, McKinsey & Company, and Bain & Company, working with me on research, writing, and management
Cass Lauer, my development editor with New Degree Press, who helped brainstorm many of the concepts that morphed into The Great Reboot
Natalie Bailey, my reviews editor with New Degree Press, working with me on the manuscript, including potentially new stories coming from this campaign
Jen Wichman, my acquiring editor with New Degree Press, helping me structure the manuscript and fill in the gaps still missing
I’d also like to acknowledge the huge list of talented people at New Degree Press who are working on marketing, video production, and other aspects of publishing.
This book has been a tremendous learning journey for me so far. I have spoken with literally hundreds of leaders, in every continent of the world, about the general topic of the economy, technology, and the pandemic. But more specifically, even preceding the pandemic, I have done in-depth interviews with founders, executives, technology creators, and investors about how to think through the consequences of the technologies we create in society. These people currently or formerly work at places like Amazon, Facebook, Uber, billion-dollar startups, and top academic institutions.
In the next few months, this learning journey is about to get even more interesting, and I hope you join me for it.
Do sign up for the newsletter to know when the book is out!
Thank you so much for all of your love and support.
Abraços,
Arnobio
