Often, less is more when writing a book. But occasionally what is cut is still worth reading—including the former foreword to "AI and the Art of Being Human."
It's interesting how closely this mirrors the feedback I left on Amazon... which I think means you succeeded at getting these points across without spilling too much up front, the way this foreword might've.
The one thing I did notice that might've improved the book for me, if it'd had this foreword, was a disclaimer right up front admitting that the fictional allegories might be a little too convenient to be completely believable. I do ultimately agree with your reasons for using them, as I also included in my Amazon review, but the later introduction to the reasons for their use seemed slightly more rhetorically defensive to me. That caused me a little cognitive dissonance about accepting the proposed tools as something I could recommend to others without reservation, as they lacked the clear connection to reality that the case studies I'm more accustomed to in this sort of book tend to provide.
Thanks Bill - and helpful feedback. It was always going to be a challenge writing a book for such a broad audience that includes everyone from high schoolers and parents to teachers, futurists, community leaders, and the business community -- and doing this within a global context. The feedback we're getting is that we succeeded pretty well here, but there are always going to be these dissonances between what people expect within a particular tradition/set of expectations and what they read.
Definitely. I think that concern might be somewhat unique to me, and I also think that actually gathering directly supportive case studies would have taken much too long in this case (even though I do believe they probably exist). Overall, I don't think you and Jeff could've done any better for a broad audience in this timely a manner, and I'm glad you got this message out there when I also think it's sorely needed.
I'm unfortunately out of the loop on academia for now, but I will definitely be using this tool to help talk plenty of businesspeople and friends off the ledge in the meantime.
I totally resonate with having to ditch bits you love for the readers experience, especially when thinking about AI explanations. Do you think this kind of ruthless editing applies to optimizing code too?
It's interesting how closely this mirrors the feedback I left on Amazon... which I think means you succeeded at getting these points across without spilling too much up front, the way this foreword might've.
The one thing I did notice that might've improved the book for me, if it'd had this foreword, was a disclaimer right up front admitting that the fictional allegories might be a little too convenient to be completely believable. I do ultimately agree with your reasons for using them, as I also included in my Amazon review, but the later introduction to the reasons for their use seemed slightly more rhetorically defensive to me. That caused me a little cognitive dissonance about accepting the proposed tools as something I could recommend to others without reservation, as they lacked the clear connection to reality that the case studies I'm more accustomed to in this sort of book tend to provide.
Thanks Bill - and helpful feedback. It was always going to be a challenge writing a book for such a broad audience that includes everyone from high schoolers and parents to teachers, futurists, community leaders, and the business community -- and doing this within a global context. The feedback we're getting is that we succeeded pretty well here, but there are always going to be these dissonances between what people expect within a particular tradition/set of expectations and what they read.
Definitely. I think that concern might be somewhat unique to me, and I also think that actually gathering directly supportive case studies would have taken much too long in this case (even though I do believe they probably exist). Overall, I don't think you and Jeff could've done any better for a broad audience in this timely a manner, and I'm glad you got this message out there when I also think it's sorely needed.
I'm unfortunately out of the loop on academia for now, but I will definitely be using this tool to help talk plenty of businesspeople and friends off the ledge in the meantime.
I totally resonate with having to ditch bits you love for the readers experience, especially when thinking about AI explanations. Do you think this kind of ruthless editing applies to optimizing code too?
good stuff Jeff, just got your book :)