BACK MATTER

A note on sources

The primary sources of this book are memory, relationships, and a small number of dated public documents — the January 2017 Medium post Love the people, hate the system, a handful of LinkedIn recommendations across thirteen years, a few Medium posts from around 2018, and a few others. The rest of the book draws on private messages, LinkedIn DMs, WhatsApp threads, and unrecorded conversations, all of which exist, in the original, in my own archives and in the archives of the people concerned.

Where I have quoted a message, I have quoted it as accurately as I can from the original. Where I could not find the original, I have paraphrased and said so. Where someone has asked me not to quote them, I have not.

If This Road, the first book of this trilogy, is the companion volume. theheld.ai, the third, is being released alongside this one. Readers who would like to read the trilogy in the order it was written should start with If This Road, then this book, then theheld.ai. Readers who want the shortest route to the argument should read theheld.ai first and work backward.