In 2004 I previewed Minsky's chapters-in-progress for "The Emotion Machine", and exchanged some comments with him (which was a thrill for me). Here is an excerpt from that exchange:
Me: I am one of your readers who falls into the gap between research and implementation: I do neither. However, I am enough of a reader of research, and have done enough implementation and software project management that when I read of ideas such as yours, I evaluate them for implementability. From this point of view, "The Society of Mind" was somewhat frustrating: while I could well believe in the plausibility of the ideas, and saw their value in organizing further thought, it was hard to see how they could be implemented. The ideas in "The Emotion Machine" feel more implementable.
Minsky: Indeed it was. So, in fact, the new book is the result of 15 years of trying to fix this, by replacing the 'bottom-up' approach of SoM by the 'top-down' ideas of the Emotion machine.
It might've been Push Singh (Minsky's protege) who said that every page of Society of Mind was someone's AI dissertation waiting to happen.
When I took Minsky's Society of Mind class, IIRC, it actually had the format -- not of going through the pages and chapters -- but of him walking in, and talking about whatever he'd been working on that day, for writing The Emotion Machine. :)
Minsky: Indeed it was. So, in fact, the new book is the result of 15 years of trying to fix this, by replacing the 'bottom-up' approach of SoM by the 'top-down' ideas of the Emotion machine.