Reclaiming Purpose

Acknowledgments

Like the narrator of the T. S. Eliot poem included at the end of chapter eight, I wrote this book knowing that the old world order is broken and falling away, that the new world order is not yet clearly defined, and that the transition will be messy, painful, and hard to navigate. When Ryan Flahive, my acquisitions editor at Wiley, asked me to write the book, I found the prospect daunting since AI, as we think of it today, is still so new and evolving so quickly. Yet I agreed to do it, because I always turn to writing to make sense of things. So I wrote this book not so much as an expert (who really is at this moment?) but as a learner.

What great teachers I have had on this journey, starting with my coauthors, George Siemens and Tanya Gamby. Even though I took the lead on writing and revising the book, they contributed key parts of it, and, more important, their thinking is everywhere apparent. We have learned together. We also learned a lot from the Matter and Space team, especially Rachel Koblic, Damien Coyle, Ann Wang, Rob English, Matt Beil, Kemp Battle, John Fillmore, Bill Nash, Srecko Joksimovic, and the others at C3L. The larger framing of this historical moment borrows heavily from the work of the amazing Carlota Perez. Imagine my joy when a mutual friend introduced me to Carlota, whom I have long admired. She has been generous in sharing her thinking with me, and my optimism about a new Golden Age, balanced with a sober fear of the difficult transition ...