Author and Film Producer
Jonathan Taplin is an American author, film producer, and academic who served as Director Emeritus of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab. He is the author of Move Fast and Break Things and was formerly a tour manager for Bob Dylan and a film producer for Martin Scorsese.
by Jonathan Taplin
Taplin, a former music-industry executive and USC director, argues that the concentration of platform power in Facebook, Google, and Amazon destroyed the economics of creative work and eroded democratic discourse. The book argues that libertarian ideology inherited from Peter Thiel's circle turned monopolistic platforms into an unexamined political project.
The books Jonathan Taplin references, cites, and recommends most frequently.
by Brad Stone
Stone chronicles Bezos's relentless, customer-obsessed drive to transform Amazon from online bookstore into global commerce and cloud empire. Visionary brilliance meets ruthless execution.
by Steven Levy
Levy had unprecedented access to Google's founders, engineers, and executives over two years to chronicle the company's algorithms, culture, and strategic battles. Levy argues that Google's engineering-led culture and willingness to automate judgement represented a fundamentally new way of building a company.
by Tim Wu
Wu traces a recurring cycle in information industries: open systems get consolidated by monopolists, then disrupted again. From telephone to internet, the pattern threatens every medium.
by Walter Isaacson
Isaacson portrays Jobs as a study in contradictions - visionary and cruel, obsessive and brilliant. His core thesis: Jobs' relentless pursuit of perfection and control over end-to-end products reshaped entire industries.
Who Jonathan draws from, and who draws from Jonathan — aggregated across every book in this collection. Counts show the number of citation links, not the depth of each one.