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.