Vaporized

What happens when everything that can be turned into information is turned into information? This is the central question driving Robert Tercek’s exploration of the software-defined world in Vaporized. He argues that our economy and culture are undergoing a massive, irreversible phase change—away from atoms (physical goods and processes) and toward bits (software and data). Tasks, products, and institutions that once relied on physical forms are now digitized, streamed, and constantly updated in the cloud.

Tercek calls this the era of the software-defined society. Its logic is simple but radical: “Whatever can be vaporized will be.” Products, media, and even social institutions lose their material anchors and re-form as digital services. The transformation is cultural as much as technical—it changes how you value things, what businesses sell, and even how you perceive ownership and identity.

Ephemeralization and the Logic of Doing More with Less

Tercek borrows from Buckminster Fuller’s concept of ephemeralization: doing “more and more with less and less until you can do everything with nothing.” Where Fuller used the satellite as an example of lightweight information replacing physical infrastructure, Tercek shows how software continues that trajectory. From spreadsheets to streaming media, tangible infrastructure is replaced by invisible code and global networks. This doesn’t just boost efficiency—it shifts where economic value lives.

In practical terms, as products vaporize, value consolidates around two elements: software interfaces (how you access the product) and data (how the product learns and improves). The material object becomes the carrier for an information experience rather than the main event.

Information as Atmosphere

Tercek’s vivid “vapor” metaphor describes this change in states: solids like books and CDs became liquids through web downloads, and now vapor through streaming and cloud services. Information seeps into the atmosphere around us—persistent, ambient, always-on. The more our world turns to vapor, the harder it becomes to separate content, device, and network. You no longer buy a product; you enter an ecosystem.

Apple’s success illustrates the model: the real value lies not in the phone’s metal but in the combined system of device + OS + app store + content. Each part reinforces the others, creating a loop that replaces entire industries. Tower Records didn’t just lose its customers—it lost the idea of the “store” itself. iTunes vaporized the retail location into software.

New Rules for Value and Ownership

Digital goods behave differently from physical ones. Information is non-rival, infinitely replicable, and easy to version. That undermines the economics of scarcity. Ownership becomes subscription, usage becomes licensing, and identity becomes metadata. What used to be tangible and finite now acts as a flow—a service renewed every time you log in.

The strategic pivot

Tercek’s key challenge to you is this: identify which parts of your business can be expressed as software, and decide what you must digitize, package, and control. The winners learn how to turn trapped information inside their operations into new services and recurring revenue.

Across the chapters, Tercek blends technology history, case studies (from desktop publishing to Uber and IoT), and forward-looking speculation about AI and networked minds. But the pattern remains constant: information replaces infrastructure, platforms replace pipelines, and those who master software and data reshape industries. As you navigate this vaporized economy, your success depends on locating and owning the right digital control points—because in the software-defined society, everything solid eventually turns to code.

To understand vaporization in action, look at how print and broadcast media were dismantled by software. The move from metal type to desktop publishing was one of the earliest and clearest examples. Within a decade, the linotype machine, molten lead, and expert typesetters were replaced by a handful of programs—PostScript, PageMaker, and the Apple LaserWriter. These tools didn’t just boost efficiency; they redefined who could create and publish. Production moved from specialized shops to personal desktops, and the creative audience was activated.

The Desktop Publishing Revolution

Adobe’s PostScript provided the open, device-independent format that allowed files to move freely across systems. Apple’s LaserWriter put a surprisingly powerful processor inside the printer itself. PageMaker introduced drag-and-drop design. The combination of processing power, networks, and open standards toppled a century-old industry. Firms like Mergenthaler Linotype that adapted—by licensing font software instead of selling machines—survived by vaporizing their own business models before others did.

The Activated Audience

Once tools democratize creation, the audience stops being passive. Tercek calls this the activated audience—a pattern repeated from the 1980s desktop revolution to the 2000s blogosphere and modern social media. People don’t just consume content; they edit, remix, and distribute it. That participatory behavior lays the foundation for YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok—each one built on the premise that the user is both customer and creator.

Television’s Denial and Disruption

Traditional television, convinced of its dominance, dismissed early digital experiments. Even as engineers demonstrated interactive TV and mobile streaming prototypes in the 1990s, executives saw them as novelties. That institutional denial opened space for Netflix and YouTube to redefine moving images as on-demand, mobile, and social. YouTube’s billion-user library and Netflix’s global streaming model proved that viewers preferred freedom over broadcast schedules. The “schedule” itself became obsolete.

The repeating pattern

Established industries often treat disruptive innovations as low quality or off-brand until it’s too late. The print, music, and TV cases show how digital tools erode the borders between producer and audience and invert control of distribution.

If your organization relies on tightly held expertise or proprietary pipelines, you’re vulnerable to the next “PostScript moment.” The key question is not whether digitization will come but whether you’ll adapt your roles, tools, and business models before it does.

Every wave of vaporization produces new power centers—switchboards and platforms that connect participants at scale. Tercek uses this framework to explain where value migrates in the digital ecosystem. A switchboard is any system that connects users, products, or data flows; when money exchanges hands, it becomes a marketplace. As platforms open APIs and tools for others, they evolve into ecosystems that shape entire industries.

Switchboards and Network Laws

Moore’s law keeps making devices cheaper and more powerful, while Metcalfe’s law amplifies network value with every new user. Combined, they create runaway feedback loops—the more people participate, the more valuable the platform becomes. Google, Apple, Amazon, and Airbnb demonstrate this dynamic. Airbnb doesn’t own hotels but organizes a vast housing inventory through data and trust. The real estate is physical, but the control layer is pure software.

The Control Points of Platforms

Platforms dominate by controlling four strategic levers: tools for creation (like YouTube uploaders or iPhone cameras), discovery algorithms (Google search or Facebook feeds), monetization systems (App Store billing, ad exchanges), and consumption environments (phones, browsers, smart TVs). Whoever manages these earns enduring rents. These aren’t monopolies in the legal sense but in effect—the gravitational hubs of the vaporized economy.

The App Dictatorships

Apple’s App Store and Google Play illustrate how benevolent platforms evolve into kingdoms. They offer reach, trust, and billing—but at the price of dependence and a 30% commission. Platform owners can suppress competitors, rewrite rules, or clone your innovation. Tercek calls them “App Dictatorships,” urging developers either to diversify across platforms or create their own distribution channels. The strategic choice is between reach and control.

Your strategy check

Ask yourself: can you own a switchboard or must you operate inside one? The earlier you claim a platform position, the more durable your edge—but the higher the competitive pressure.

Platforms redefine capitalism’s geography. They transform producers into participants and customers into data sources. To succeed in this environment, you must map your industry's platforms, locate the control points, and consciously choose where to play, partner, or resist.

Tercek positions data as the defining asset of the vaporized age. Physical systems generate static goods, but digital systems generate compounding intelligence. The real economic value now resides in the data layer—the aggregate record of human behavior, sensor readings, and machine interactions that can be mined for insight and prediction.

Owning the Graph

Platforms like Facebook, Foursquare, SoundCloud, and Kickstarter construct different “graphs”: social, location, listening, and crowdfunding relationships. Each graph maps a distinct domain of behavior, creating discovery and recommendation power. The more people participate, the more valuable the dataset becomes. That compounding feedback makes information businesses so potent—they not only scale, they learn.

Tercek contrasts “data geysers” like Twitter or Tumblr—where users continuously produce new content—with traditional “content sinks” like publishers that burn money to create finite inventory. Investors increasingly favor platforms that let users grow the data asset themselves.

Infonomics and Invisible Assets

Economist Doug Laney calls for accounting systems that treat information as a measurable asset—a new field Tercek refers to as infonomics. Yet balance sheets and GDP still ignore intangible value even as trillions shift there. Your opportunity (and risk) lies in treating data as the primary product, not a by-product.

A strategic mindset

Ask: what data do I uniquely own? How fast does it compound with use? And how defensible is that dataset from replication or expropriation?

From industrial sensors (as in SteadyServ’s beer keg monitors) to personalized recommendation engines, the companies that thrive in this era treat data not just as measurement but as core capital. The challenge is to extract value ethically, transparently, and with explicit user consent—because trust is the scarce resource data empires depend on.

The Internet of Things represents a new wave of vaporization—embedding computation into the physical world. But Tercek warns that the real power doesn’t reside in the devices themselves. It’s in the data layer: the cloud platforms, APIs, and analytics that interpret and monetize what sensors collect. Whoever controls that layer controls the customer and the value stream.

From Light Bulbs to Ecosystems

Take Philips Hue lights: the bulb is just an entry point. The software platform enables schedulers, mood settings, and developer APIs. The light’s output becomes content, and users trade electricity for data-rich experiences. Retailers adopt similar tactics through beacons and analytics—Tesco’s virtual subway stores and context-aware promotions being early examples. Each transforms a physical space into a programmable data interface.

The Opt-In Panopticon

Connecting everyday objects raises profound privacy issues. The same sensors that personalize experiences also enable surveillance. Tercek cites FTC Chair Edith Ramirez’s call for “privacy by design” and warns that consumer complacency—opting convenience over control—normalizes an “opt-in Panopticon.” You gain personalization but sacrifice autonomy. The companies that succeed will be those that embed transparency, security, and user choice at the core of their design.

Risks of Orphaned and Insecure Devices

Many IoT devices ship insecure, unencrypted, and unmaintained. When manufacturers vanish or products go unsupported, orphan devices become attack vectors. Tercek urges engineers to design for updates, allow user credential control, and plan device lifecycles. Otherwise, the connected home becomes a networked liability.

Key challenge

Your product’s future value lies not in hardware features but in how responsibly and intelligently you manage its data layer—across transparency, interoperability, and longevity.

The lesson? Smart devices make sense only within smart ecosystems. To survive, design connected products around trust, maintenance, and data integrity—not short-term novelty.

The on-demand model—popularized by Uber—illustrates vaporization’s economic and political consequences. Ownership gives way to access, and employment gives way to flexible marketplaces. Consumers get convenience; suppliers get opportunity; but the system thrives on software coordination and data-driven control.

Access Over Ownership

Uber’s platform connects idle cars to passengers via dynamic pricing and GPS data. It does not own the assets it coordinates, yet commands massive market share and valuation. Each driver contributes to a self-improving data set, and every rider transaction strengthens Uber’s predictive algorithms. The platform model replicates across sectors (“Uber for X”), from food delivery to car washing. Any field with underused assets becomes a candidate for vaporization.

Reputation Versus Regulation

With disruption comes backlash. Taxi medallions, unions, and city regulators fought Uber to protect entrenched rents. Tercek frames this as a contest between two accountability systems: bureaucratic regulation and reputation markets. Ratings can discipline behavior faster than licensing agencies—but only for certain domains. Where public safety or legal oversight matters, software self-regulation falls short. That tension defines the politics of the on-demand world.

Strategic Guidance for Marketplace Builders

If you operate a two-sided marketplace, expect resistance. Engage regulators early, invest in transparent data and safety records, and use grassroots users as your political allies. Scale fast but plan for scrutiny. The winners balance frictionless growth with trust-building and social license to operate.

Broader implication

As industries become data switchboards, value creation collides with governance. Designing fair, transparent platforms may become as critical as technical innovation itself.

Uber, Airbnb, and their peers show both the promise and peril of vaporization. You can use these models to unlock efficiency and scale—but you must navigate the legal, ethical, and cultural challenges that arise when software replaces social norms.

Vaporization ultimately merges into automation—the rise of what economist W. Brian Arthur calls the “second economy,” where machines transact, analyze, and act without human input. Tercek explores this through robotics, artificial intelligence, education, and even neural augmentation, asking what remains uniquely human.

The Machine Workforce

Software bots already manage logistics, trade securities, and recommend media. Physical robots like Amazon’s Kiva systems or Baxter from Rethink Robotics automate warehouses and factories. Google’s acquisitions of DeepMind and Boston Dynamics reflect a strategy to merge cognition and motion—building autonomous systems that continuously learn. The upshot: routine labor, both blue- and white-collar, faces displacement or transformation.

The Vaporized University

Higher education is one of the next sectors under pressure. MOOCs and alternative credentials challenge multi-decade tuition inflation and signal a move toward modular, machine-readable learning. The traditional diploma’s signaling power remains, but new ecosystems like Mozilla’s Open Badges show how verified micro-credentials can substitute or supplement degrees. Georgia Tech’s $7,000 online master’s partnership with Udacity demonstrates that credible, low-cost digital credentials can scale sustainably.

Transcending the Body

The final horizon Tercek explores is biological: the fusion of digital and neural interfaces. From DARPA’s work on brain-controlled prosthetics to speculative projects on whole-brain emulation, the book dares readers to consider whether human thought itself can eventually be digitized. While full mind uploading remains theoretical, early progress in prosthetics, neurofeedback, and AI points toward a future of augmented rather than merely replaced humanity.

Human adaptability

Automation doesn’t end human relevance—it redefines it. Your task is to cultivate skills that complement rather than compete with machines: creativity, empathy, and moral decision-making.

In Tercek’s view, the vaporized economy is only the prologue. As networks and code permeate every domain—from education to consciousness—the defining challenge is maintaining agency and meaning when software mediates nearly everything you do.