Simon St.Laurent offers an insider's perspective on the evolution of structured content and markup technologies at O'Reilly and throughout his career, emphasizing how tools like DocBook, Framemaker, and SGML laid the groundwork for today's componentized publishing models. In this podcast, Simon discusses the enduring value of structured data formats and how early practices are proving essential in the age of AI. 

In this episode of Rule-breakers, Sean talks to Peter Flynn, an expert in markup languages and typesetting. With a background in traditional printing and computer typesetting, Peter transitioned into academia at UCC, where he became involved in early web development. He met Tim Berners-Lee while serving on a European Community committee, witnessing the demonstration of the nascent World Wide Web. Inspired, Peter downloaded the source code and launched Ireland's first website, subsequently contributing to discussions on HTML standardization.

In this episode, Sean and John talk about 25 years of technological change, focusing on AI's impact on legislation and regulation. They highlight the shift to natural language interfaces and the need for responsible AI adoption, emphasizing data quality and human oversight. While excited about AI's potential, they caution against its unbridled use and the dangers of treating it as a human persona.