Predicting Technology by Thomas E. Vass

Predicting Technology by Thomas E. Vass
Technology/Economics

We all know how much technology has changed our lives over the past few years. You can even trace the evolution of technology over the course of a single year. Vass has written this book with the hopes that from it, organizations, entrepreneurs, and ordinary citizens can better understand how technology evolves, how it affects our lives, and what we can do to assist in technological innovation.

Vass starts out by giving the basic definitions that people need to understand to grasp the concepts of the book. These definitions are clearly explained in such a way that anyone should be able to understand. Vass also takes well known economic models and expands on them. For anyone that has taken an economics course before, we know that the models only actually work in a 'perfect world'. However, there's no such thing as a perfect world and Vass does a great job of adapting models to take this into consideration. I've never seen anything like his proposed spiral models. They make a lot of sense!

We were taught in the MBA that if you can get your point across in a table, then you will likely be able to communicate your idea much better. Vass neatly sums up his ideas at the end of the book which allows them to be used as tools for anyone reading the book.

The amount of research that Vass has done is exceptional. He supports his ideas with multiple sources and explains quotations from those sources. However, I am concerned that Vass is targeting his book to the wrong audience. He states at the beginning that this book can be read by "ordinary citizens" but I think this book would be better targeted towards people with economics and technological knowledge. Specifically, CIOs and business students. Ordinary citizens are not going to be able to understand the mathematical equations or some of the economics concepts unless they've been exposed to them before.