This book can be read with profit by anyone interested in how such innovation can be understood and shaped.  From a rich base of empirical cases and theoretical frames, the authors produce a portrait of modern technology and its development in a (predominately) democratic political system and a (predominately) market economy.  But the book is simultaneously a book about history, particularly about the ways conscious actions, intentions, luck, and knowledge affect the course of history.  Many of the ideas could as easily be used to talk about the development of religious movements, political institutions, or scientific paradigms."