Hands Up

This book began with a picture.

My father and my son on a roller coaster. The grandfather with his hands in the air, laughing. The grandson gripping the bar, eyes huge. One coaster. Two postures. The whole lesson of my family, mid-air, in a single frame.

Everything between that picture and this page — the garage, the telescope, the bet, the day the world changed, the restructure, the machines, the people, the love letters — was my attempt to show you what that picture actually teaches. So let me end where we began, because the ending and the beginning are the same lesson.

We are all facing the same roller coaster ride.

All of us. The owner who has been in business thirty years and the apprentice who started last month. The company with the machines and the company still gripping a clipboard. Me, writing this. You, reading it. Nobody gets to stay on the platform. The ride is happening — the drops, the speed, the turns none of us can see from here — whether we chose it or not.

The only thing we choose — the only thing we have ever gotten to choose — is how we want to ride.

Scared to death, gripping the bar, eyes shut, waiting for it to be over.

Or all in. Hands up.

I will not pretend the fear isn't real. You know by now that I ride scared too — scared and all in at the same time, most mornings. Both can be true. The bar-grippers and the hands-up riders feel the same drop in their stomachs. The difference is not the fear. The difference is what you decide the fear means — a reason to shut your eyes, or proof that you are exactly where the ride gets good.

And there is one more thing the picture has been trying to tell you all along — the physics of it, the part so obvious it took me years to say out loud. You cannot put your hands up while they are still gripping the bar. The bar is whatever you are holding: the way the industry used to work. The org chart you were proud of. The expertise that made you the smartest person in the old room. The company you already built. The person you already were.

You have to let go of what was, to be ready for what is to come. Not because what was didn't matter — it mattered enough to carry you here — but because your hands are the only pair you get, and they cannot hold the past and reach for the future at the same time. Letting go is not the loss. Letting go is the readiness.

My father knew. He got on every coaster in the park, no matter how scary it looked from the ground, and he put his hands in the air on every single one. He did it on the rides, and he did it in the warehouse in Bellevue, and he did it in the garage, and he did it at the end, when the coaster was one none of us would have chosen. Hands up. Smile the whole ride.

That is what he taught me. That is what this whole book has been trying to hand to you.

To the Parents and the Grandparents

One more word before I let you go — and it is for the ones sitting in the middle of the car. The parents. The grandparents. The ones riding with a hand on a smaller shoulder.

I do not know what the future is going to look like. I have spent this entire book telling you what I see coming, and even so, I will only guarantee you one thing: it is going to be significantly different from anything we can imagine. Robots will become a part of our everyday life. Jobs — and what it takes to be employable at all — will look nothing like they look today. Whether it lands closer to utopia or closer to anarchy, I honestly do not know. The AI race running through this world — nations, companies, all of it — is real, and we are not stopping it.

Here is what I do know. The next generation is relying on us. Not on the companies. Not on the governments. On us — the adults already in the car. They are relying on us to navigate AI and robotics for them until they can navigate it themselves, and they are relying on us to be the most mature version of ourselves we can possibly be while we do it.

Maturity, on this ride, does not mean certainty. Nobody has certainty. It means we do not get to grip the bar, shut our eyes, and hope somebody else steers. It means we learn this first, before we need to teach it. It means we stay curious when it would be easier to be cynical, steady when it would be easier to panic, and honest — especially with the small people watching us — about what we know and what we do not.

I will tell you how that responsibility sits with me. As a grandparent, I feel an extreme level of responsibility to be as knowledgeable, as advanced, as forward-thinking, and as responsible as I can possibly be. My father would have expected nothing less. And I hope to build a slice of the world that Dallas can be creative in — a world he can have a home in.

I do not trust that the school systems, as they stand today, will prepare our children and grandchildren for what is coming. And I do not believe it is anyone else's responsibility but our own. Not the schools'. Not the platforms'. Not the government's. Ours.

Therefore I ship new technology. Therefore I disrupt my own industry. Therefore I take the beatings from competitors who do not know any better.

And I would not take one moment of it back. Because the benefit has been building businesses for hardworking people and entrepreneurs. Saving many of their companies from closure. Creating thousands of jobs for our growing clients. That is what hands-up looks like when it leaves the amusement park — it is not a thrill. It is a responsibility, kept.

Look at the picture one more time. My father did not put his hands up because the coaster was safe. He put his hands up because a boy was watching. That is the job. That has always been the job.

My father rode in front of me. I am riding in front of Dallas. The dedication of this book says the line runs through both of them and that I am in the middle — and if you are a parent or a grandparent reading this, so are you. The middle is not where you brace. The middle is where you demonstrate.

The ride is the same ride. The choice is yours.

All in.

Hands up.

— Jennifer L. Bagley