The document discusses the Scalaz 8 effect system which provides a composable collection of data types and type classes to build functional, performant, and resource-safe I/O applications. It introduces the core concepts of asynchronous and concurrent programming using the IO type, various concurrency models, resource safety techniques, and compares its performance and safety with other libraries like Cats and Monix. Scalaz 8 IO is noted for its high performance, type safety, and expressive concurrency features.