Hacking Gravity - A Book Review: Trillions, Thriving in the Emerging Information Ecology

Cross-Posted to LinkedIN
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Trillions is extremely thought provoking, I read this as an audiobook on my walks to work for my internship as a Senior Product Manager for Amazon as I was working an IoT device. I really enjoyed the book.for a few weeks and really enjoyed it. The broad themes of persuasive design, generative architecture, data liquidity, and taming complexity made all my gears turn. 
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1. Persuasive Design: I appreciate the design fundamentals sprinkled throughout the book, and the vivid narratives of what the future might be like. My favorite was the hardware store of the future. How can we simplify our everyday electronics into components? What would that look like? Would shopping for a replacement IoT component be like picking up a 2" diameter right angle pipe at Home Depot when your plumbing broke? Fascinating thoughts.
2. Data liquidity: We have all of this data being transmitted from trillions of devices, what is going to be the innovation that streamlines all of it? What is the protocol that will be analogous to the shipping container in the 1950s that will create an explosion of growth?
3. Generative Architecture: I loved the theme of buildings things with strong fundamentals and having good architecture.  There is an interesting trade off in software development that is going on between the open source wild west programmer and structured programming as if we're electricians following building code. (If you've ever read Snow Crash, this made me think of the government programmers vs. the hackers delivering pizza). The example of the Mississippi River, how farmers could alter the banks by creating small channels and change an entire course of a river. We need to build products that tame complexity by having this good, generative architecture. 
4. Taming Complexity: I can't stop thinking about how complexity is conserved. Another amazing example with the 420 sailboat. Now, I know nothing about sailboats, but understanding that the complexity stayed the same as the design evolved, it just got transferred to how it was manufactured instead of a frustrating consumer experience. How can we tame complexity in the products that we build?

There was a LOT of reference to Maya Design, which I loved. It really helps give context as to why these three guys wrote this book. It was great to hear the stories and anecdotes from Mickey, Peter, and Joe. This came through excellent on the audiobook, providing additional context and clarity to each chapter's concepts. 

Overall, I'd recommend this book for folks in the technology space and people that are curious as to the impacts design has for building good products as we climb up "Trillions Mountain"

Amazon.com - Trillions: Thriving in the Information Ecology

Top 10 Business lessons for Trillions Mountain

1. Persuasive computing is the next information technology paradigm. Connectivity is the seed of this inflection point.
2. Your current business risk is much higher then you think. What is the malignant complexity in your business.
3. Move beyond open source and towards open components.
4. Good News - Trillions is a very big number. new business model based off of little bits of information. understand the value in your information.
5. Complexity is inevitable. But bad complexity will kill you. Have architectural thinking.
6. Design for generativity and emergence. Get in the practice of building dynamic simulations of your entire business ecosystem early and often.
7. Design is not a paint job, user interface, a styling. Design is the whole shooting match. If your organization is not design aware, it's a dinosaur.
8. Make sure Computing is Human Literate.
9. Computing should fade into the woodwork so humans can come into the forefront. Think about Anti-lock brakes.
10. Explore ways you can simulate and foster strange bed fellow relationships now. Make sure you become part of the information flow. What would happen if you partnered with someone you weren't thinking about.

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Photo Credit: MAYA Design - ​vimeo.com/49392667