FutureHype

Well, I finished this book.  It was great really.  I particularly liked his refreshing viewpoint.  No,  we are not hurtling on to a neverending techno-future without hope.  In fact his basic premise of the entire book was that exponential growth only happens for a short time in any particular field.  I would actually argue that while this is a fair view of things we actually see that technology advancement actually matches the type of change that is used to describe evolutionary change.  Punctuated equilibrium (and if I have the term wrong be sure and tell me what is correct)  This idea is that you have eras of vast change in a species during a short time period alternated with long periods of relatively small and slow change.  Agriculture has followed this pattern for thousands of years.  Periods of rapid advancement followed by years of relatively small change. 

His spotlight metaphor was also very refreshing.  The spotlight is on computer change and growth right now, but it will shift to something else as exponential growth in computers becomes unsustainable.  As soon as we have a major innovation in another field you will see a shift in emphasis to that field (probably transportation or genetic/biomedical engineering)