Summary

Summary

Likely only the very brave will reach this point after having studied all of the “materials” (no pun intended) presented in this book. Most students will have used this book a bit as one chooses courses, focusing on what is needed, interesting, and/or challenging. For the reader, we would now like to raise some crosscutting concepts that any student of this information should consider.

To a large extent this book presents sets of chapters with insight into specific areas. In many cases the chapters present technology-specific views and understanding of the current state of the art or state of affairs for the specific area. The more technology-specific chapters provide an idea of what is needed in order to advance specific technologies, and present a picture of how that technology or the situation brought about by the technology may evolve.