"apart"

Important revolutions of the past 30 years include the Internet, personal computers, the XML programming language, and the breakup of AT&T. What do they have in common? All are based on innovations that break technology apart. After breaking a technology apart, it still works — phone calls could still be made after the breakup of AT&T — but it is composed of smaller and more flexible pieces that can be used to create new innovations. This process is called "disaggregation," so named because the pieces of the technology that were formerly stuck together are pried apart but not destroyed. Using the simple metaphor of the pebble and the avalanche — prying rocks loose from a mountaintop releases tremendous energy — this book explains the workings and benefits of disaggregation. Author Yudkowsky uses case studies from familiar companies and industries to explain how to generate similar innovations, in the process identifying strategies and tactics that maximize these innovations.

We Come Apart caps a period of growth and reinvention for Kitchell, who was 17 when she released her first album This Storm in 2006. Since then, she moved from her hometown in the hills of western Massachusetts to New York City, spent time in parts of Europe and Asia, worked as a side musician and a songwriter-for-hire, released the Convict of Conviction EP of string quartets in 2010, learned the technical side of recording music and taught herself photography. She also recorded We Come Apart two different times, once with money she raised through a PledgeMusic campaign and the second time with funds she scraped together herself.

Following the collapse of Dali's Car, Murphy embarked on a solo career in earnest, fortuitously hooking up with Howard Hughes, who had been working with fellow cult artists the Associates. With 4AD label head Ivo Watts-Russell drafted in to produce and guest musicians popping in as desired, Murphy and Hughes created a slightly fragmentary but still intriguing record. Caught between his recent past (the use of fretless bass on "Canvas Beauty" was a dead giveaway that he missed working with Mick Karn) and his eventual solo successes, Murphy concentrates here mostly on breaking free of the goth stereotype in which he had found himself trapped.