Androids: The Missing Pieces
An Introduction
While I was writing (and editing, and rewriting, and re-editing, and re-rewriting, ad infinitum) the book Androids: The Team That Built the Android Operating System, I realized that much of what I learned along the way, and even wrote into original drafts, would never see the light of day. For one thing, the 412-page book is already long enough and cuts had to be made somewhere to pack it into a size that real people would want to consume. Some stories just didn’t tie in well enough, some topics got too deep into the weeds of a particular area, and some stuff I simply couldn’t figure out how to fit into the story without dragging the overall narrative completely off the rails.
So I deleted things, eliminating content that came from hours of interviews, days of writing, and weeks of edits and rewrites. It didn’t hurt much, not more than removing a limb, or a heart, or a head.
In the end, I think the book is better for these cuts; the overall story is tighter and less daunting from a “I don’t have enough time to read that huge book” standpoint. And readers don’t (I hope) miss what they didn’t know was there to begin with.
But I miss all of it, because I had more to say.
Now that the book is done, published, re-published (the original edition was self-published to get it out there quickly, but since then No Starch Press picked it up and recently published the new edition), and even narrated in the upcoming audiobook, I thought I’d look into some of the bits I didn’t have space for in the book, publishing these pieces as standalone articles.
I’ll start, as one does, at the end, with what was originally the final chapter of the book, in which I analyzed everything I’d written to try to answer the original premise and question for the book: How did Android succeed? Read Part I: Why Android Worked to discover that answer.
If you find this topic interesting, I’d invite you to check out the book, either in paperback or ebook form from No Starch Press (soon available on Amazon, other online print and ebook stores, and even orderable from your local bookstore as well), or in the upcoming audiobook from Tantor Media. All profits from all of these are being donated to tech-related charities.
