Jerome McGann

Foreword

By Edo Segal

The part of this book I almost didn't write is the part about the acknowledgments page.

Not because it was difficult. Because it was embarrassing. I have published work before. I have written acknowledgments before. I have thanked editors, collaborators, advisors, designers — thanked them warmly, sincerely, and then watched my name absorb their contributions as completely as if they had never existed. The cover said Edo Segal. The convention held. I never once stopped to ask what the convention was protecting.

Jerome McGann stopped. He spent four decades asking that question with the patience of an archaeologist and the precision of a forensic accountant, and the answer he found is one that every person writing with AI needs to hear: the solitary author