Arthur Morgan
He spent thirty years building the screens. Then the screens replaced him. Now he's writing about what comes next.
About
The real Arthur Morgan — author, not outlaw
Yes, he has the same name as the protagonist of Red Dead Redemption 2. That's not a coincidence worth ignoring. The fictional Arthur Morgan starts his story as an enforcer for a predatory loan shark. He tells himself it's just business. Eventually, he can't anymore.
The real Arthur Morgan spent thirty years in Silicon Valley building AI and speech technology — from General Magic, the Apple spinoff that invented the ancestor of Siri and Alexa, to Nuance Communications, to a unicorn AI startup. His job, stripped of the jargon, was to capture human attention and convert it into revenue. He was, in Cory Doctorow's term, a twiddler.
In mid-2024, he was fired on a five-minute Zoom call. With no job, no title, and no plan, he loaded a Rivian R1T he'd named Rocinante — after John Steinbeck's truck in Travels with Charley — and set out with Paco, his Spanish Water Dog, on an 8,000-mile road trip across America.
Both Arthur Morgans needed redemption. Only one of them is fictional.
Arthur Morgan and Paco: Spanish Water Dog, co-pilot, better judge of character than most people
The Book
Travels With Paco
A memoir in the tradition of Steinbeck, arriving just as Big Tech faces their Big Tobacco moment in court.
Travels With Paco: In Search of American Redemption
A memoir. A cultural diagnosis. An urgent argument.
What began as one man's search for meaning became a field report on a country coming apart at the seams. In lakeside cabins in Montana and West Virginia hardware stores, on Nebraska ranches and Chicago sidewalks, Morgan met the Americans still practicing the lost art of community.
Drawing on Robert Putnam's research in Bowling Alone, the moral arc of the fictional Arthur Morgan, and the road Steinbeck traveled sixty years earlier, the book asks whether a country that forgot how to raise boys into men of character can find its way back.
He spent thirty years building the screens. Then the screens replaced him. Part road trip. Part reckoning.
Career
Thirty years inside the machine
A technology executive who worked at the intersection of AI, speech recognition, and accessibility before leaving to write about what it all means.
Author · 2024–Present
Travels With Paco
Memoir in progress. 8,000 miles across America with a Spanish Water Dog. Asking whether the country the tech industry helped build is the one anyone actually wanted.
Verbit.ai · 2020–2024
Head of Product, Education & Government
Led the product roadmap for AI-driven transcription, captioning, and accessibility tools used by universities and government agencies across the United States.
Automatic Sync Technologies (acq. by Verbit) · 2011–2020
VP Partner Development
Built accessibility infrastructure for higher education. Founded with a U.S. Department of Education grant to reduce the cost of captioning through AI.
Nuance Communications · 1999–2005
Senior Product Manager
Designed speaker verification and voice automation products. Helped grow Nuance from a startup to a $19.7B enterprise that was later acquired by Microsoft.
General Magic (Apple Spinoff) · 1997–1999
Manager, Software Development — Voice UI
Managed development of the Portico Personal Assistant — a pioneering voice interface that served as the conceptual ancestor of Siri, Alexa, and modern AI assistants. Called "the most important company in Silicon Valley that nobody's ever heard of" by Apple CEO John Sculley. Alumni went on to build the iPhone, Nest, and eBay.
Contact
Where to find him
travelswithpaco.com
The dedicated book website — excerpts, themes, press, and everything else about Travels With Paco.
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