Explaining the Future: How to Research, Analyze, and Report on Emerging Technologies

Cover
Explaining the Future: How to Research, Analyze, and Report on Emerging Technologies
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
Acknowledgments
Contents
Chapter 1: 
Key Questions
	Question 1: What’s so special about this technology?
	Question 2: What problem are you trying to solve?
		Technical requirements
		Ethical and legal requirements
		Commercial requirements
		Potential obstacles
		No problem for the solution? Be creative . . .
	Question 3: What is the effect of time?
		Limits
		Money, momentum, and market
		Getting started
	Question 4: What is the competition?
		The status quo
		Technology in development
		Something completely different
	Question 5: What are the features of each competitor?
	Summary
Chapter 2: 
Finding Answers
	Getting organized
	Example work flow
		Which application is the most promising?
		What are the application’s requirements?
		What is the competition?
		What are the features of the competing technologies?
		A simple plan
		Real life steps in
	Types of sources
		Keywords
		Search engines
	Technical
		The technical literature
		Forward and backward citations
		Books and book chapters
	Commercial/technical
		Patents
		The technical press
		Industry bloggers
		Industry reports and roadmaps
	The outside world
		People
		Conferences
		Lab, company, and site visits
		Business development and PR/comms people
	Commercial
		Trademarks and designs
		Annual reports
		Websites, press releases, and whitepapers
	Summary
Chapter 3: 
Perspectives and Agendas
	The press and the trade press
	Look for the naysayers
		Disagreement over the problem to be solved
		Misleading without deliberately lying
		More contrary positions
	Individual agendas
		Industry/corporation-supported cheerleaders
	Credibility, analysis, and balance
	Summary
Chapter 4: 
Analyze
	Starting point
		Application-focused analysis
		Technology-focused analysis
		Choosing an application
	Level of detail
		On time, on spec
	Routes through the process
	Phase 1: Understand the technology
		Step 1: The basics
		Step 2: Features
		Step 3: Potential applications
		Step 4: Eliminating distractions
	Phase 2: Taking the application’s point of view
		Step 1: The basics
		Step 2: The competition
	Phase 3: Timing
		Step 1: Ramping up
		Step 2: Roadmap and uncertainty
		Step 3: Evolution
	Phase 4: Coming to a conclusion
	Phase 5: Reality checking
		Step 1: The application
		Step 2: Your own work
		Step 3: Fixing your analysis
	Summary
Case Study Part I: Research and Analysis
	A quick introduction to neuromorphic engineering
	A quick introduction to photonics in computing
	Getting down to work
	Iterative trawling
	Redirection
	Moving forward
	Moving the goalposts
	Toward the finish line
	Wrapping up
Chapter 5: 
Audience and Explanation
	Audience
		Showing respect
		Preparation
		Multiple audiences
	Purpose
	Explanation
	Jargon
	Visualization
		Photos
		Diagrams
		Graphs
		Videos
		Different audiences, different images
		Figure captions and legends
		Copyright and plagiarism
	Summary
Chapter 6: 
Technical Argument and Structure
	The technical argument
		What is the vision?
		What is the status quo?
		What is the technical problem?
		What are the competing solutions?
		What is the new solution?
		What are the obstacles?
		What is the prognosis?
	Structure
		Weight
		Writing the title and introduction last
		Title
		Introduction
		Conclusion
	Variations on an outline
		Outline for a basic research project
		Outline for a review
	Summary
Chapter 7: 
Credibility
	Show, don’t (just) tell
	Be honest, authoritative, and accurate
	Prepare for objections
	Signposts, resting points, and flow
		Paragraphs
		Topic and linking sentences
		Connector phrases
		Non sequiturs
		Sentence length
		Section and subheadings
	Make it easy to read
		Voice
		Repetition
		Grammar
		Legibility
		Mathematics, code, data, and other technical detail
		References
	Don’t give rough drafts to readers
	Summary
Case Study Part II: 
 Report
	Will silicon photonics speed up deep learning?
	Optimizing neural hardware
	New viability for photonics
	Discussion
	Conclusion
Epilogue
References
Index