Uncertain

In an era of terrifying unpredictability, we race to address complex crises with neat algorithms, bullet points, or hurried tweets. How could we find the clarity and vision so urgently needed today by being unsure? Uncertain is about the unsung triumph of doing just that.

A scientific adventure tale set on the front lines of a volatile era, this paradigm-shifting book by award-winning author Maggie Jackson shows us how to skillfully confront the unexpected and the unknown, and how to harness not-knowing in the service of wisdom, invention, mutual understanding, and even resilience. Long neglected as a topic of study, the newly discovered gifts of uncertainty now fascinate the greatest cognitive scientists – and offer a remarkable antidote to the narrow-mindedness of our day.

In laboratories, operating rooms, boardrooms, and on the frontiers of Artificial Intelligence, Uncertain unlocks the secrets to a state of mind that is critical to human achievement yet treated as a shameful flaw. Understanding when to be unsure distinguishes a superior expert from one who is merely good enough. An ambivalent executive is more resourceful in a crisis than ultra-decisive leaders we admire. Far from luring us into inertia, uncertainty is the mindset most essential in times of flux.

Each chapter examines a mode of uncertainty-in-action, from creative reverie to productive dissent. Step by step, we discover the art and science of being unsure as a skill set for incisive thinking and as a state of being that ushers us to the fertile edge of what we do not understand.

An unpredictable world has been with us all along. Liberating ourselves from the mistaken belief that life could be otherwise offers a startling new vision of human progress and of what it means to know.

Maggie Jackson is an award-winning author and journalist known for her pioneering writings on social trends, particularly technology’s impact on humanity. Her acclaimed book Distracted kickstarted a global conversation on the steep costs of fragmenting our attention. Winner of the 2020 Dorothy Lee Book Award for excellence in technology criticism, Distracted was compared by FastCompany.com to Silent Spring for its prescient critique of technology’s excesses, named a Best Summer Book by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and was a prime inspiration for Google’s 2018 global initiative to promote digital well-being, according to Director of Design for Android Glen Murphy. Maggie Jackson’s expertise has been featured in The New York Times, Business Week, Vanity Fair, Wired.com, O Magazine, and The Times of London; on MSNBC, NPR’s All Things Considered, Oprah Radio, The Takeaway, and on the Diane Rehm Show and the Brian Lehrer Show; and in multiple TV segments and film documentaries worldwide. She was a contributing consultant to Diane Sawyer’s primetime ABC special “ScreenTime” in 2019. Jackson has contributed to numerous anthologies including Living with Robots: Emerging Issues on the Psychological and Social Implications of Robotics (2020); State of the American Mind: Sixteen Leading Critics on the New Anti-Intellectualism (2015); and The Digital Divide (2011). Her speaking career includes appearances at Google, Harvard Business School, and the Chautauqua Institute. Jackson lives with her family in New York and Rhode Island.