Comment by Fellshard

Having just finished that title, that's a bit of a poor reduction - that section is more one of his usual tangents, with some interesting consequences explored, but basically ends up being used to set up for the changes in technology required to support the rest of the book.

That said, he does spend a lot of time early on basically showing the transition his Shaftoe/Enoch/Dodge-verse must ultimately take; it's kind of an eschaton of many of his prior works.