The distinguished tech inventor, entrepreneur and writer Jaron Lanier is nostalgic for the future. In his acclaimed new book, Who Owns The Future?, which is out today, Lanier takes Silicon Valley to task for monopolizing ownership of the future.

Explicitly comparing the “extractive” business models of Wall Street with Silicon Valley’s “free” content economy, Lanier told me that we are “pulling the value out of bits”. “Free” is the big problem, Lanier says. This Facebook/Google model is “not a sensible way to run the world,” he says, because it takes advantage of naive consumers, thereby impoverishing them and shrinking the economy.

But Lanier, for all his criticism of Silicon Valley, remains an optimist about the digital economy. “Work your f$@king butt off,” the inventor of virtual reality advises startup entrepreneurs. And, in what may be the best free advice anyone gives you this year, he tells entrepreneurs to focus on making your customers wealthy.

In another life, the densely accented Belorussian media theorist Yevgeny Morozov might have made an amusing subject for a Saturday Night Live skit. But, in real life, there’s nothing at all comic about Morozov. Wielding a scalpel as sharp as the most acidic SNL scriptwriter, Morozov has turned his intellect against such illustrious tech thinkers as Tim O’Reilly, Jeff Jarvis and Steven Johnson.

To be “Morozoved” is to be savaged in 16,000 word critiques that seek to destroy the reputations of Silicon Valley’s best and brightest. So why, I asked Morozov, does he indulge in these types of intellectual blitzkriegs? “The whole debate is a nonsense,” he explains, laying out the foundations of his new book To Save Everything, Click Here.

Silicon Valley, he argues, claims that it can solve big political problems like climate change or obesity. But, he says, the tech community – with its algorithms of human perfection – has no understanding of how imperfect we actually are. Indeed, Morozov uses himself as a good example of both imperfection and hypocrisy – suggesting perhaps that the next person to be Morozoved will be Morozov himself.

Once upon a time, back in the prehistoric late 20th century, we all suffered from something called Future Shock – a condition that, according to best-selling writer Alvin Toeffler, made us unable to deal with the pace of technological change. Today, however, our future shock has been replaced by present shock. That, at least, is the view of the contemporary Toeffler, Douglas Rushkoff, who has just written the much lauded Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now.

Rushkoff’s intriguing thesis in Present Shock is that today’s always-on technology has created a dictatorship of the present in which everything happens now. So what are the real entrepreneurial opportunities, I asked Rushkoff, in an age in which everything happens in the present? Rather than at companies like Facebook or Google, he explains, real innovation will happen with entrepreneurs who understood that our industrial model has been replaced by what he calls a “steady state real-time economy.” The big opportunities, Rushkoff says, now lie in areas like authentication, banking and alternative currencies – and with timeless companies like Etsy and Duncan YoYo.

Intel is one of those rare tech companies – IBM also comes to mind – that has successfully reinvented itself with each new wave of technological disruption. So, in our post-PC, networked age, how should we define Intel now? According to their new CIO, Kim Stevenson, Intel is a “computing company” that is now trying to be “startup-like”. And one disruptive area that Stevenson believes is “unexploited” is 3D visualization  applications – products which make visual sense of big data. There’s a “market gap” here, Stevenson told me.

3D visualization is “for real”, she explained, because 3D camera costs have come down and because so many of our products are touch and gesture enabled. This may be one reason why, as Stevenson reminded me, Intel is getting into the device business. And it’s certainly one area that intrigues their investment arm, Intel Capital. I suspect Stevenson is right. Since the late nineties, when I ran business development for Pulse3D, 3D has always been the product of the future. But this future has finally arrived and I suspect that Intel’s latest reinvention will be to ride this immersive wave.

So what’s the future of e-commerce? According to Hiroshi “Mickey” Mikitani, the multi-billionaire founder and CEO of the Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten, it lies in making online stores more hospitable. In his new book, Marketplace 3.0; Rewriting the Rules of Borderless Business, Mikitani lays out his vision for the future of online retailing. As he told me, buying products online will be marked by a shift away from what he calls “standardization” toward a more customized experience.

This new “hospitality” model, Mikitani explains, is essential if e-commerce is to remain a disruptive force in the digital economy. In a sense, I suspect, Mikitani might be suggesting that e-commerce should become more Japanese, in its focus on politeness. Perhaps. But neither Mikitani nor Rakuten should be underestimated. With its $15 billion market cap, its acquisitions of Buy.com and the e-book creator Kobo, not to mention its $100 million investment in Pinterest, Rakuten has emerged as a genuine global player in the digital economy. Mickey Mikitani and his 10,000 employees at Rakuten really are rewriting the rules of borderless business. They might even be the real future of e-commerce.

Finally, our secret is out. Today, Deborah Perry Piscione’s much anticipated new book Secrets of Silicon Valley: What Everyone Can Learn From The Innovation Capital Of The World is being published. As Piscione told me, the real secret of Silicon Valley lies in our absence of hierarchy.

In contrast with New York, she told me, Silicon Valley is obsessed with “ideas” rather than with “greed” or “power”. And this love of ideas, Piscione insists, is why it’s the west rather than the east coast that is really driving innovation in the United States. I’m guessing that not everyone – particularly those up and down the eastern seaboard – will agree with Piscione. So expect Secrets of Silicon Valley to spark a much-needed national conversation about how best to innovate in an economy in which too many executives still crave stability and fear change.

And so the book has finally been written about Big Data. This new book, Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work and Think - written by Oxford University professor Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and The Economist journalist Ken Cukier – is the definitive guide to a new age which, both authors promise, is going to revolutionize the way we live, work and think. But “we are still in the first inning” of this age, Cukier says. So what are the business opportunities right now, I ask them, for startup entrepreneurs wanting to unlock new economic value in the big data economy? Healthcare and automotive, Cukier argues. Education, Mayer-Schonberger adds. But both authors also recognize the dangers of a big data age in which we flesh-and-blood humans might be in danger of ourselves being reduced to mere data.

Brian Zisk’s annual SFMusicTech conference is always a good place to gauge the temperature of the music industry. And judging by the vitality of this year’s event, things are finally beginning to look up in an industry that has been decimated by the file-sharing revolution. As Jon Irwin, president of the on-demand streaming service Rhapsody, told me at SFMusicTech, smartphone technology – particularly the iOS and Android platforms – has enabled a radically new experience for music lovers.

As Irwin explained, this shifts the industry’s business model from the sale of product to what he calls “streaming as a platform,” noting the increasing dominance of subscription services like Rhapsody, Spotify and Pandora. The big new business opportunities, Irwin says, both lie with the collection of data about consumer behavior and with enabling artists to build much more intimate relationships with their fans. With their more than a million paid subscribers, the 11-year-old Rhapsody remains an important player in this new economy.

But why should we choose Rhapsody over newer and splashier services like Rdio, Spotify or Pandora? According to Irwin, it’s because Rhapsody really puts us in control of our music, allowing us to take it with us wherever we go. And for artists, Irwin insists, Rhapsody is a much better investment, proving greater revenue than either Spotify or Pandora.

The Pulitzer Prize winning technology journalist Matt Richtel is one of the New York Times’ crown jewels. But while Richtel works his Silicon Valley beat during the day, he has a much darker night-time profession. Richtel is also a fiction writer, the author of fantastically seductive techno-fictional novels such as Hooked and his latest book, The Cloud, released earlier this month.

In real life, Richtel is equally seductive – an impish guy who combines a tall wit with a highly sophisticated understanding of how technology, and particularly the Internet, is changing human beings. “I love telling stories,” he explains his passion for techno-fiction. And, as the illustrious New York Times journalist confessed to me, technology is making us more human by revealing what we really want (pornography over apple pie, he rightly points out). Matt Richtel is, of course, right. And I suspect that his novels, especially The Cloud, are far more profound explorations of technology’s impact on us than all the non-fictional books in Gladwell-land.

Ron Conway once contended that successful entrepreneurs – the seriously big dogs of tech like Gates, Jobs and Zuckerberg – are born rather than bred. But what Conway neglected to add is that entrepreneurial success can be measured by the length of our fingers. That, at least, is one contention in the new book by best-selling writer Po Bronson (co-written with Ashley Merryman), whose Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing is getting attention in all the right places.

Success can be determined by measuring the length of our index finger in comparison to our ring finger, Bronson told me about the research behind Top Dog. But that’s not the only conclusion about success that Bronson revealed. Riffing off Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, Bronson explained the science of winning and losing, thereby rendering the legendary intuition of venture capitalists redundant.

So is Bronson barking up the wrong tree? Is there really a science of winning and losing? And should VCs like Ron Conway and Mike Arrington base their investment decisions on the finger length of start-up entrepreneurs?

Which American politician is most committed to the digital reinvention of government? Yes, there’s President Obama, of course, and Silicon Valley congresswoman Anna Eshoo. But if there is one prominent U.S. politician who has consistently staked his reputation to the digital revolution, it may be Gavin Newsom, the two-time San Francisco mayor who is now the Lieutenant Governor of California. Regular readers will already be familiar with Newsom, both as a Disrupt speaker and as a tenant at the Founder’s Den. And this week he is launching a new book, Citizenville: How to Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government, a FarmVille-inspired riff which lays out his agenda for transforming American politics.

“People are disconnected from government”, Newsom explained to me why he wrote Citizenville. His commitment is to something called “government as a platform” which transforms citizens into co-producers and dramatically shifts the relationship between these citizens and government. Provocative stuff. Equally interesting is Newsom’s evaluation of Obama’s digital record, his absolute faith in the cloud and his regret at not investing in Twitter.

So is Gavin Newsom a real Internet revolutionary? Or is he just a smart pol riding what he calls the digital “tsunami”?

Facebook is, of course, built around Mark Zuckerberg‘s ideal of a radically transparent world. Less transparent, however, is Zuckerberg’s business genius, the secret behind his awesome success. But now Zuck’s genius has been revealed by the Intel marketing executive, Ekaterina Walter, with a new Wall Street Journal bestselling book, Think Like Zuck: The Five Business Secrets of Facebook’s Improbably Brilliant CEO.

So how can we think like Zuck? I asked Walter when she came into our San Francisco studio. What are the five business secrets that explain his dizzying success? The answers, Walter revealed about Zuckerberg’s secrets, all begin with P. If we want to think like Zuck, she told me, we need to learn these words. Then maybe all of us can emulate the success of the young billionaire who, just last week, took home the Crunchie for CEO of the Year.

The Aaron Swartz tragedy has unleashed an intense debate about computer “crime” and the US criminal justice system. Heavyweights like Lessig, Doctorow, Greenwald, Masnick, Wu and Kerr have all written with great passion about the case. But the one article that really resonated with me was written by the Harvard Business Review blogger James Allworth. Provocatively entitled “Aaron Swartz’s “crime” and the business of breaking the law”, Allworth compares Swartz’s “crime” with crimes committed by money launderers and deadly corporate criminals. As he told me, there appears to be a “systemic” problem with an American legal system in which an activist hacker like Swartz faced personal bankruptcy and 35 years in jail, while a healthcare executive guilty of bringing a product to market that killed innocent people only got 9 months in jail. It’s “extremely unfair” Allworth told me, arguing that the Swartz case proves that the American criminal justice system can be bought by powerful corporations.

So is Allworth right? Has the Swartz case exposed the flagrant unfairness of the legal system? And do we need an “Aaron’s Law” to, at least, ensure that the Swartz tragedy will never happen again?

Finally some good news about the future of publishing. Amidst all the doom and gloom about e-reading, one company – Byliner – is reinventing the business of selling online writing. As John Tayman, the company’s founder and CEO, told me, Byliner is monetizing the space between magazine articles and books by selling short-form pieces for around $2.99 or $3.99. With writers as illustrious as Margaret Atwood, Michael Lewis and Sebastian Junger, the 16 month old startup is already selling a million pieces a year, Tayman told me. What is particularly encouraging about Byliner is its uncompromising mix of the best written content with excellent technology. No wonder then that Tayman’s startup has attracted a stellar list of both old and new media investors – from Random House to CrunchFund – to finance this very encouraging experiment in monetizing short-form content.

Online piracy just won’t seem to go away. A disturbing report released today by the University of South California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab demonstrates the economic connection between the online advertising industry and pirated film, music and video content. This Advertising Transparency Report [pdf], which reveals the top ten ad networks which place the most online ads on pirate sites, has Google at #2 and Yahoo at #6 in its hall of shame. “This is where the money is,” Jonathan Taplin, the Director of the Annenberg Innovation Lab, told me about the placing on ads on pirate networks like Kim Dotcom’s Megaupload, when we spoke today. “It adds up to millions of dollars,” Taplin, who was once tour manager for Bob Dylan and produced Martin Scorsese’s first movie Mean Streets, told me. And it’s the movie makers and musicians, Taplin explained, who are the real victims of this situation because they aren’t seeing any of the revenue from the ads placed around their stolen content.

But what to do? Taplin noted that this report – the first in a monthly series put out by his Innovation Lab – hasn’t “called out” the brands who are, perhaps unconsciously, creating this problem by buying space on pirate sites. So Annenberg’s Advertising Transparency Report should be seen as a wake-up call to brands to invest their advertising dollars in legal networks like Spotify or YouTube rather than pirate sites. Pretty simple, eh? Let’s hope that Madison Avenue wakes up to the troubling implications of Taplin’s report and shifts all its online advertising dollars to movie and music sites which actually pay artists for their content.

One of technology’s most persistently prescient crystal ball gazers is Betaworks CEO John Borthwick, a guy who – from Summize to Tweetdeck to bitly to Digg to his latest baby tapestry - always thinks ahead of the crowd. So, as a follow-up to Borthwick’s review of 2012, I sat down with the Betaworks CEO in his New York City office to get his take on what will happen in 2013. As always with Borthwick, the conversation was free-ranging and bold – particularly his prediction of how bad ideas will die sooner in 2013 and why that will be a good thing for startup entrepreneurs. And I was particularly struck by Borthwick’s vision of the “persistence of old platforms” in 2013 – a theme that TechCrunch’s Keith Teare also touched upon this weekend in his provocative Unnatural Acts piece.

So rather than a “web of things,” perhaps 2013 will really be a year in which we all go back to the future – back to a “re-portalization” craze and platform wars in which reinvented giants like Yahoo! and Microsoft realize new relevance. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, as the French – a nation that knows a thing or two about persisting with old platforms – might say.

What was the most significant tech event of 2012? No, neither Apple after Steve Jobs nor the Facebook IPO. Not at least according to John Borthwick, the CEO of Betaworks and one of the shrewdest observers of the tech scene. Borthwick came on my show to look backwards at 2012 and what he saw was mostly an abundance of tablets and the Facebook-Instagram deal. On the hardware side, Borthwick saw 2012 as the year of the tablet when “everyone gets a fucking tablet for xmas” and when mobile products become so ubiquitous that 2012 might be the last year when we even use the word “mobile”. But it’s developments on the software side that most intrigues Borthwick – who counted, amongst Betaworks’ most significant 2012 accomplishments, the acquisition of Digg. On the software side, Borthwick told me, the billion dollar Facebook acquisition of Instagram is critical for three reasons. Firstly, it underlines the centrality of mobile; secondly, it shows how quickly upstart companies like Facebook have to shift to defense in today’s fast paced economy; and thirdly, it is a demonstration of the remarkable speed with which startups like Instagram can get to scale.

Next week, Borthwick looks into his crystal ball and predicts what will happen in 2013.

Few people are better equipped to imagine the future of online journalism than Emily Bell. Currently the Director of Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Bell was formerly director of digital content at the Guardian newspaper where she pioneered much of what we now take for granted about online journalism. And now Bell has co-authored (with Clay Shirky and C.W. Anderson) a controversial report about the future of journalism entitled Post Industrial Journalism. As Bell told me when we talked in her New York office, she believes that online journalism has a future – both in terms of content sitting behind paywalls, ad-supported news, and content subsidized by organizations or wealthy individuals. Indeed, in what Bell calls the “disruptive stage” of online journalism, she thinks that there are now “massive opportunities” for entrepreneurs looking to reinvent journalism.

So is Bell right? Are publications like ProPublica, Quartz and even TechCrunch symbols of a golden age of post-industrial journalism? Or is it possible, as some have argued, that the Internet is actually killing the news industry and thus weakening our democracy?

A new Ray Kurzweil book is always a major event. And his latest work, How To Create A Mind: The Secret Of Human Thought Revealed, is classic Kurzweil – both infuriatingly brilliant and brilliantly infuriating. Given Kurzweil’s remarkable intelligence, it might not be a coincidence that How To Create A Mind is a book about intelligence – focusing, in classic Kurzweilian territory, on the growing intelligence of machines. As Kurzweil told me, with products like IBM’s Watson, Apple’s Siri and Google’s self-driving cars, we are already on the road to a world in which computers will operate at the level and with the speed of the human mind.

This singularity of the mind and the machine will be reached by 2029, Kurzweil explained to me. In the meantime, he told me, there are many opportunities – from biotech, electronics, and neuroscience to natural language – for entrepreneurs to help build this brave new world.

So is Kurzweil right? Are we really on the brink of reverse engineering the brain so that technology will know how to create a mind? And if so, as I asked Kurzweil, how will the arrival of truly intelligent machines affect the human mind itself.

Woz spoke at TEDx Brussels this week and his presence electrified the 2,000 people in the audience. Afterwards, I had the great fortune to catch the great man in a characteristically thoughtful mood. We talked about his regrets (none), his optimism about the future of technology, his take on the Scott Forstall saga and, most interestingly, his “worry” that Microsoft has become a more innovative company than Apple. But what most struck me about Steve Wozniak is his comfort in front of the camera. Much has been said about his unworldliness, but Woz is now so savvy, smooth and smart that I wonder whether, if Tim Cook should stumble, Apple might consider bringing him back as their CEO.