About This Publication

My name is Arthur Morgan. Yes, the same name as the protagonist of Red Dead Redemption 2. That’s not a coincidence I’ve been able to ignore, and it’s part of why I’m writing a book.

The fictional Arthur Morgan starts as an enforcer for a predatory loan shark in 1899 America. He collects debts from struggling farmers. He tells himself it’s just business. Eventually he can’t anymore.

I spent thirty years in Silicon Valley building AI and speech technology — at companies from General Magic to Nuance (acquired by Microsoft for $19.7B). My job, stripped of the jargon, was to help capture human attention and convert it into revenue. I told myself I was connecting people and making the world more open. Then in 2024, I was fired on a five-minute Zoom call. The machine I’d helped build didn’t need me anymore.

Both Arthur Morgans needed redemption. This newsletter is where I’m working mine out in public.

What You’ll Find Here

Travels With Paco is a memoir I’m writing about an 8,000-mile road trip I took across America after losing my job. “Rocinante” — a Rivian R1T, named after Steinbeck’s truck — carried the three of us: Paco in the backseat, a 20-gauge in the gear tunnel, and me trying to figure out what came next.

What began as one man’s search for meaning became a field report on a country coming apart at the seams — and the people quietly putting it back together.

In this Substack you’ll find:

• Essays and excerpts from the book — on income inequality, masculinity, screen addiction, community, and redemption

• Dispatches from the road and from the writing process

• A behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to publish a first book after a career in tech

• Beta reader access — early subscribers get the chance to read and respond to chapters before they go to print

If any of this sounds like your kind of reading, subscribe below. It’s free.

About the Book

Travels With Paco: In Search of American Redemption follows the path Steinbeck traveled in Travels with Charley, arriving sixty years later with a dog, an electric truck, and a specific question: What happens to a country when it lets screens do most of the teaching?

It draws on Robert Putnam’s research in Bowling Alone, encounters with real Americans from Nebraska ranches to West Virginia hardware stores, and one former Silicon Valley insider’s uncomfortable reckoning with what he helped build.

Part road trip. Part reckoning. More at travelswithpaco.com.

About Arthur Morgan

Former Silicon Valley technology executive. First-time author. Recovering twiddler.

Career highlights include working on early AI at General Magic — the Apple spinoff that built the ancestor of Siri and Alexa — and two decades of speech recognition, accessibility tech, and AI products that millions of people used, mostly without knowing it.

Education: BA, University of Colorado at Boulder, summa cum laude. MBA, Thunderbird School of Global Management. Certificate in Nonprofit Management, Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and Paco, both of whom remain unimpressed by his credentials.

→ arthurmorgan.com
→ travelswithpaco.com
→ Connect on LinkedIn

A Note on Frequency

Posts here are infrequent. That’s intentional. This newsletter is about reconnecting with the real world, not feeding the scroll. If you’re looking for daily content, there are approximately four million Substacks that will oblige. This one believes your time is better spent outside.