In this case it is a great and good little read.
I discovered Charles Stross when i chanced upon a speech he gave to an engineering technology open day in Munich at their invitation.
Posted by him on it is
a shrewd and knowledgable projection of computing and its impact on the world in the foreseeable
future.
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/05/shaping_the_future.html
Charles Stross also writes good SF for a living: he portrays a world of the not-too-distant future where we can find ourselves in completely plausible and probable - yet utterly bizarre - situations. Situations which could so easily arise for real, as on-line Multi-Player-Games and Virtual Realities such as Second Life become more popular, better coded and distributed: As 'lag free' 3D fully interactive 'virtual immersion' software becomes streamlined , efficient and affordable.
He describes many factors, the rates of change and rates of exchange of relevant technologies and commodities - even of progress itself - in recent history*.
And then he describes how these most likely project forward, and some of the implications that can be predicted, as side affects ripple out.
(*Things like the cost and thus capacity of data storage, and the cost and capacity of bandwidth ie the delivery of data. The cost of manufactured silicon and diamonds. Improvements in technology, distribution and coding protocols.. The finite limits of how much data can physically be stored on any medium, down to the molecular level. )
It doesn't take long to read and is thought provoking, gripping stuff,
[note to self: gripping stuff is akin to stripping guff]
