The document discusses async programming in .NET using the Async CTP. It explains that async programming is important for multicore processing and handling asynchronous operations like web requests without blocking the UI. The Async CTP allows writing async code using the async and await keywords in C# and VB.NET to simplify asynchronous calls and avoid callbacks. It provides an example of asynchronously downloading and parsing RSS feed XML and compares the old callback-based approach to the new async approach.