While I found the book boring, I do like to read explorations of a world where the "obvious" (to us!) technologies grow and see what aspects of society change.

While I found the book boring, I do like to read explorations of a world where the "obvious" (to us!) technologies grow and see what aspects of society change. In essence, that's really what any Sci-Fi book must accomplish especially if they don't have a good story to tell behind that. While a lot of the key thoughts weren't really new versus what I was reading in short stories a decade ago, it did offer some further "what if" scenarios that are interesting with (especially) the wearables and contact lens UI. In addition, the (sometimes jumbled) interaction of people with their certificate authorities and groups was something that wouldn't have been discussed at all in older scifi-- those are problems we'll need to think about more eventually and I liked seeing those ideas explored a bit. Overall, I think I like Rainbow's End more as a touch on a lot of different near tech since a good bit of SciFi focuses on one or two far-out tech concepts that become "magic" versus tech. This one covers a lot of not-so-distant and not-so-magic tech concepts we can almost see on the horizon: * Wearable computing * Augmented reality * GPS-guided air-mail * Virtual amusement parks * Library digitization * Networks of trust and authentication * Emergent AI (slightly more "magic", but has always been "any day now" in scifi) * Ubiquitous software development * Auto-pilot vehicles * Virtual reality learning * Virtual tribes/cliques/social groups * ... lots more ... Pretty much everything he discusses (maybe aside from body regeneration?) is near enough in possibility that you can see how we might get there and it's interesting to think about the interactions of all of the concepts at once. While he's not a good story teller, the high number of topics he was tackling at once made the story something I kept reading. I think it's unfair to give him a low grade because he didn't come up with lots of "new" revolutionary ideas-- just exploring the interactions between them is compelling enough that I'd like young scientists to read this, even if they see a different future ahead. I would also like to read more stories of the "near cool" future rather than only have access to deeper stories like Diamond Age, Ender's Game, and Steel Beach.