A prescient look inside the expanding universe of economic, social and tehcnological possibilities within the world of the silicon chip, by George Gilder, 1989, Simon and Schuster; $10.95 softcover edition
Gilder's basic thesis is that technology has implications far beyond what most people can see, even nuts like me who live with it. Electronics is advancing so fast that information will soon cost next to nothing, and this will have radical, decentralizing effects on all sorts of institutions, including all those awful phallocentric governments and businesses that now run the world and oppress the politically correct segments of the population.
He also thinks, and rightly so, that electronics is so fast paced because it isn't based on raw materials that can be bought up and controlled, but on thought. Intellect is fairly evenly distributed among the human race (except politicians), and so it is much easier for anyone with good ideas to thrive in a field in which, more than any other, success is based on merit.
A problem leftish types have with technology is its appeal to people who don't cut it at wine and cheese parties. When you combine this with the problems Uncle Scam and other coercive governments will have with encrypted personal communications and other wonders of modern technology, you wonder, as Gilder does, how they can survive many more decades.
One neat aspect of electronics that Gilder points out is the greater ease of working at home. One obvious benefit of this is that it will be far easier for both sexes to participate in child rearing (Michael Jackson would love it), and children will not feel abandoned as they sometimes do now, and grow up to become vicious psychopaths working for Dewy, Screwum & Howe. Many of these changes can help men. Discrimination will be much less likely, because of the anonymity of working for someone who has never seen you. Besides, how could Bob Packwood pinch his secretary through a fiber optic cable?
All in all, this is a great book, and I understand that Mr. Gilder already has a sequel on the way, called Telecosm. He has his own inimitable style of writing, which allows him to say things that are very hard for most people to put into words ... or at least hard for me. I recommend this book for anyone who has an interest in the future.