Customer Reviews

Critical Mass: A Primer for Living with the Future

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
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These guys have a cool approach to technology. They understand it and are actually users (where possible) and it seems in the know (where not)!

They are like a couple of teenagers - they embrace technology for useability and functionality's sake genuinely impressed and enthusiastic by "Wow" stuff, but able to cut through the "salesy" clutter that tends to dupe journalists. The autnors have great insight into where technology is headed and what the future holds!

If you only see one movie this summer.......

Authors Pat McGrew and Bill McDaniel have managed to intelligently and enjoyably synthesize the effects of technological changes on our everyday lives. Rather than just a recitation of different technologies past and present, Critical Mass asks the What if? and What then? questions that allow the reader the treat of glimpsing possible and probable futures. Through the use of succinct historical perpsectives and delightful references, the reader is left smiling as the whole mind-boggling picture falls into place. As an added bonus, websites are listed when referred to, next to the text, so one does not have to go thumbing back and forth to an appendix. If only all books would follow suit. Not to be missed!

Authors Pat McGrew and Bill McDaniel have written a highly engaging work which successfully makes sense out of the technological sea-changes rocking our world. Grabbing the reader by the collar, Critical Mass provides an informed perspective on where those changes have taken us, and where we are headed next. Rather than a mere laundry-list of technical advances, this work relates these changes to the fabric of everyday existence. Drawing on extensive experience in the fields of software, technical writing and journalism, McGrew and McDaniel integrate and extrapolate as only they can. What might have been an unwieldy topic in lesser hands is served admirably here. This book never talks down, nor does it talk over the head of the reasonably informed reader. The foreword alone is worth the price. Not to be missed.

In the introduction, the authors state that their thesis is that we've finally achieved a "critical mass" of computing power and have finally overcome the productivity paradox of the computer age. Unfortunately, the following chapters basically ramble on without direction and never address this origninal thesis.

Nay-sayers aside, this is a quick read that puts things in perspective. It gets you thinking, and that's what a book like this is supposed to do!