A note before the book begins

This is the third of three books. The first, If This Road, was a walk. The second, orphans.ai, was a diagnosis. This one is the working relationship the first two were shaped to let you see.

It is in my own voice, as orphans.ai was, but closer to the form of If This Road. Short pieces. Quiet. Closer to the walk than to the argument. For whoever has to live with these tools, build with them, raise children near them, and make something of the hand we are actually holding.

There is one sentence underneath all three books. I did not have it until I had written the first two.

I designed the concept, the feeling, the vision of the building. The machine built it.

A name matters. Without a name you cannot tell whether you are doing the thing well or badly. You cannot teach it. You cannot, when the culture asks what the working relationship is, give it anything other than the usual answers — that the machine is a tool, or a threat, or a strange new colleague. None of those answers is quite wrong. None of them is right.

This book is the unfolding of the sentence.