The book is all about a common language that can be shared to build artifacts that are alive. It stresses that a design should always concentrate on the "whole" and not on assembling parts. It also shows the power of distributed processing, if you will, as against centralized processing.

All the great principles have one thing in common. They are simple. And, after one realizes such a simple but profound principle, one can not stop wondering how one survived without it's knowledge. This book gives that feeling. If you are involved in architecture of any sort- buildings, software, organization or even politics- this book is a must for you.