# Read the first page of Zero to One by Peter Thiel & Blake Masters Read the opening of Zero to One by Peter Thiel & Blake Masters free, no signup. A case for building new companies around ideas that create something singular. - Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/zero-to-one-peter-thiel-and-blake-masters - Genre: Entrepreneurship - Year: 2014 - ISBN: 9780753550304 - Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9780753550304&s=read-page - Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9780753550304 - Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9780753550304 ## The opening @@CHAP@@ THE CHALLENGE OF THE FUTURE WHENEVER I INTERVIEW someone for a job, I like to ask this question: “What important truth do very few people agree with you on?” This question sounds easy because it’s straightforward. Actually, it’s very hard to answer. It’s intellectually difficult because the knowledge that everyone is taught in school is by definition agreed upon. And it’s psychologically difficult because anyone trying to answer must say something she knows to be unpopular. Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius. Most commonly, I hear answers like the following: “Our educational system is broken and urgently needs to be fixed.” “America is exceptional.” “There is no God.” Those are bad answers. The first and the second statements might be true, but many people already agree with them. The third statement simply takes one side in a familiar debate. A good answer takes the following form: “Most people believe in x, but the truth is the opposite of x.” I’ll give my own answer later in this chapter. What does this contrarian question have to do with the future? In the most minimal sense, the future is simply the set of all moments yet to come. But what makes the future distinctive and important isn’t that it hasn’t happened yet, but rather that it will be a time when the world looks different from today. In this sense, if nothing about our society changes for the next 100 years, then the future is over 100 years away. If things change radically in the next decade, then the future is nearly at hand. No one can predict the future exactly, but we know two things: it’s going to be different, and it must be rooted in today’s world. Most answers to the contrarian question are different ways of seeing the present; good answers are as close as we can come to looking into the future. @@CHAP@@ ZERO TO ONE: THE FUTURE OF PROGRESS When we think about the future, we hope for a future of progress. That progress can take one of two forms. Horizontal or extensive progress means copying things that work—going from 1 to n. Horizontal progress is easy to imagine because we already know what it looks like. Vertical or intensive progress means doing new things—going from 0 to 1. Vertical progress is harder to imagine because it requires doing something nobody else has ever done. If you take one typewriter and build 100, you have made horizontal progress. If you have a typewriter and build a word processor, you have made vertical progress. At the macro level, the single word for horizontal progress is globalization—taking things that work somewhere and making them work everywhere. China is the paradigmatic example of globalization; its 20-year plan is to become like the United States is today. The Chinese have been straightforwardly copying everything that has worked in the developed world: 19th-century railroads, 20th-century air conditioning, and even entire cities. They might skip a few steps along the way—going straight to wireless without installing landlines, for instance—but they’re copying all the same. The single word for vertical, 0 to 1 progress is technology. The rapid progress of information technology in recent decades has made Silicon Valley the capital of “technology” in general. But there is no reason why technology should be limited to computers. Properly understood, any new and better way of doing things is technology. Because globalization and technology are different modes of progress, it’s possible to have both, either, or neither at the same time. For example, 1815 to 1914 was a period of both rapid technological development and rapid globalization. Between the First World War and Kissinger’s trip to reopen relations with China in 1971, there was rapid technological development but not much globalization. Since 1971, we have seen rapid globalization along with limited technological development, mostly confined to IT. This age of globalization has made it easy to imagine that the decades ahead will bring more convergence and more sameness. Even our everyday language suggests we believe in a kind of technological end of history: the division of the world into the so-called developed and developing nations implies that the “developed” world has already achieved the achievable, and that poorer nations just need to catch up. ## Books with a similar feel - [The Lean Startup by Eric Ries](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-lean-startup-eric-ries.md) - [How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis](https://uncovered.ink/read/how-to-get-rich-felix-dennis.md) - [The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-hard-thing-about-hard-things-ben-horowitz.md) - [The Millionaire Master Plan by Roger James Hamilton](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-millionaire-master-plan-roger-james-hamilton.md) - [Rework by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson](https://uncovered.ink/read/rework-jason-fried-and-david-heinemeier-hansson.md) - [The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-anatomy-of-melancholy-robert-burton.md) --- Source: Uncovered (https://uncovered.ink). 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