The Pebble and the Avalanche How Taking Things Apart Creates Revolutions

What do most of the technical and business innovations of the past 200 years have in common? Moshe Yudkowsky says the answer is simple: disaggregation. Yudkowsky details exactly how disaggregation works, describing five different ways of taking things apart, the many benefits of disaggregation and how to use it in developing new innovations. The book is filled with dozens of examples from the past 200 years demonstrating that some of the most important innovations in history - interchangeable parts, the automobile, personal computers - were actually examples of disaggregation in action.

Moshe Yudkowsky received his Ph.D. in condensed matter physics from Northwestern University. After two years as assistant director of the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Laboratory at the Department of Physics at Northwestern University, Moshe joined Bell Laboratories as a member of the technical staff. Moshe worked on a variety of projects at Bell Labs, including the first national deployment of AT&T’s “robotic operator.” After leaving AT&T, Moshe joined Dialogic Corporation as a senior system architect. Moshe worked with speech technology companies to find ways to simplify their transition to Dialogic hardware.
Moshe left Dialogic to found Disaggregate, a technology consulting firm that helps clients understand, create, and apply revolutionary technology.
In parallel with his work at AT&T and at Dialogic, Moshe chaired the Automatic Speech Recognition Task Force of the Enterprise Computer Telephony Forum, an industry trade group. In his final year with the forum, he served as technical chair of the organization.
Moshe is a founder of the Midwest Speech Technology Association, a professional organization centered in the Midwestern United States, and serves as chair of the organization. He is a member of the board of Applied Voice Input/Output Society, an international professional organization.