Barker's Future Edge, published in 1992 and later republished as Paradigms, got traction as a business-world rewrite of Thomas Kuhn's 1962 masterpiece The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Barker's book, and the lecture series it was derived from, brought the concept of paradigm shifts to corporate America, and HR departments have never been the same. Working with futurist and former pharmaceutical executive Erickson, Barker here lays out five "TechnEcologies"-a hazy sort of conceptual-material interface-that the two think will serve as the main media for commerce, and for life itself, in the decades to come. As difficult to summarize as they are to parse on a first read, Barker and Erickson's five regions or "techs" ("Super Tech," "Limits Tech," etc.) embrace everything from cell phones to ecodestruction, from aerogel (insulation that "weighs three times more than air") to gene therapy, teamwork, micro loans, Mars, eyes, anti-antibiotics, the thermal depolymerization process and mother's milk-to mention just a few of the inventions, concepts and necessities they put in play. There's a method at work here, but it's unclear how many readers will be able to fully travel to these-potentially profitable-"regions" to grok it.

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