When Peter Drucker first met IBM CEO Thomas J. Watson in the 1930s, the legendary management thinker and journalist was somewhat baffled. “He began talking about something called data processing,” Drucker recalled, “and it made absolutely no sense to me. I took it back and told my editor, and he said that Watson was a nut, and threw the interview away.”

Things that change the world always arrive out of context for the simple reason that the world hasn’t changed yet. So we always struggle to see how things will look in the future. Visionaries compete for our attention, arguing for their theory of how things will fit together and impact our lives. Billions of dollars are bet on competing claims.

This is especially true today, with artificial intelligence making head-spinning advances. But

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