Ask HN: What would it take to create PhoneBloks?

[foyle]

Hello HN,

I'm sure some of you have seen the video for PhoneBloks (http://www.phonebloks.com/).

Could one of you enumerate the possible branches of knowledge needed to produce a project such as this?

(I'm not interested in creating a phone like this - so we don't need to discuss the feasibility of the idea. But, in the future, I will probably want to toy with hobby projects related to this area: electronics, device drivers, etc.)

For some background, I am a software developer in Java/Python/etc. with some experience in C/LLVM/Assembly (but that's as low level as I get). Would something like this require ~4 years+ of knowledge from an electrical engineering school?

As an aside, I have the book Practical Electronic for Inventors, but I haven't made my way through it yet.