I've got to admit that it was an excellent read and gave me much to ponder. Virginia Postrel is the editor of the uber-libertarian Reason Magazine and also writes frequently for the Wall Street Journal . This book is basically a fleshing out of her favorite theme- that technology is what is going to carry us through the 21st century intact and save us from death by exponential and catastrophic population growth, and that the future of our culture and the arts are essentially tied to technological development. But she also warns us that only unfettered technology can flourish.
Regulation means expense and expense is the great bogeyman of research and development.
If governments start regulating genetic engineering, the Internet and nanotechnology while they are in their infancy, there will be no bright tomorrow. One of the most interesting aspects of the book was the connection that Ms. Postrel draws between the neo-Luddite Jeremy Rifkin types of the left and the nationalist Pat Buchanans of the right. She doesn't paint a utopian future. She makes it clear that the road to tomorrow won't be easy for anybody, let alone everybody. But we won't get there at all unless the social problems of our day and the problems raised by increasingly rapid change are delt with by individuals, not bureaucracies.