Smart People Should Build Complex Systems
Understanding complex systems (like Bill Gates) is the first step to building them (like Steve Jobs).
Complex systems are sexy. This must have come as quite a shock to the kids who were writing programs in high school. Today, those kids are running the world (or at least building the platforms the world runs on).
What platforms? Artificial intelligence (AI); quantum computing; blockchain; virtual reality (VR); and the internet-of-things (IoT) — they’re all complex system.
Unfortunately, for those of us who weren’t writing computers in our teens — complex systems and the technologies they create can seem intimidating. But at the same time, they’re fascinating.
The age of complex systems
What’s more, we’re living in the computer age — the age of complex systems. So understanding complex system helps us understand our moment in history.
I wanted to know how all these new technologies worked, from AI to the IoT.
But instead of diving into each of these new and transformative technologies, I decided to begin with the principles that underpin them all — the principles of complex systems.
