The book discusses the acceleration of man’s culture, society, and technology. He explores many aspects of these, their relation to history and trends for the future. He tends to back up his ideas with a lot of data. He addresses many problems current society faces and extrapolates his philosophies for their future prospects.
He breaks his ideas into six forces that forge society: animal learning, externalized learning, social connections, knowledge platforms, scientific problem-solving, and global diffusion.
Too much of the book was devoted to setup. The first part of the book is long and tedious. The majority of the book is interesting and provides good food for thought.
Although the ideas seemed well researched, I felt he was overly optimistic and even dismissive of many ideas. For instance, he dismisses global warming with the statement “If the current trend in public opinion holds [we] will soon take steps to reduce emissions.” I several topics he seem either naive or to have a poor understanding of the issue.
Even with the shortcomings, the book was interesting and presents some interesting ideas.