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 Today, however, our future shock has been replaced by present shock.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or Google, he explains, real innovation will happen with entrepreneurs who understood that our industrial model has been replaced by what he calls a “steady state real-time economy.”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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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”?

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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.

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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?

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