This book is a view into an amazing mind, an amazing research lab, and an amazing future. A key player at the MIT Media Lab presents a dizzying view of the technology of tomorrow and how it will be developed. Technology will become less annoying by disappearing into the background -- by becoming part of everyday things. By broadening the scope of the technological revolution from bits to atoms, we will finally grow out of the infantile stage of point and click (and crash).
More than just a vision of the future, this book presents real advice on how we can get there. From changing the way corporations and academic institutions work together to changing the way students are taught, the author uses the MIT Media Lab as a model of how we can maximize results.
Many amazing advances, present and future, are presented and a theme that runs through it all is that connections must be made between different areas of study. But for the author, it seems that his incredible grasp of these different areas of study is made possible because for him they are not areas of study but rather areas of play. He and his students in the Media Lab obtain a broad understanding of the world inside and outside of computers and play with bits and atoms to create the advances of tomorrow. This process is punctuated with frequent show-and-tell with industry and academia.
The ethics and possible societal drawbacks of the technologies discussed are considered only briefly as an afterthought. This is to be expected since the Media Lab is in the business of asking "Can we?" rather than "Should we?". Also, Some topics can be a bit overwhelming -- try to keep up with his discussion of quantum computing. But despite the complexity of some of the material, the book is generally quite accessible.
