You might be surprised to learn that after most of the early patents from the 70s and 80s expired, R&D labs went to work and the new generation of capacitive, optical imaging and multi-point touch technology is much smarter.

The first half of the book is more or less an ad for the company, where Tancer explains his predictions about when people will search for a given thing or his detective work to understand seemingly aberrant search phenomena (like searches for prom dresses months before the traditional US prom season).

If the above are among your benchmarks, you might end up disappointed according to a recent flood of books warning us away from The Chase. It’s a clich√© that human nature is to always want more (food, power, etc) — according to zoology and behavioural science it was hardwired into us millions of years ago.