Coming March 2027

A Choice Filled Life

Maximization for Biological Intelligence in the Age of Technological Intelligence

by airick journey crabill

In the late 1990s we charged $100,000 to build a website. Today you can build a better one for $14. The distance between those two numbers is the story of this book — because technological intelligence is about to do to most mental labor what the web did to web developers.

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Cover of A Choice Filled Life by airick journey crabill

The institutions we send children to every morning were built on an assumption that is quietly expiring: that human labor will always be the price of admission to survival.

For most of human history that assumption was true, and the schools built on top of it were rational. They sorted children for the work that existed. But technological intelligence is dissolving the scarcity that made that sorting sensible — and the first wave will land on the classroom long before it lands on the warehouse.

This book is not an argument about screen time, or whether we should have more technology or less of it. It is an argument about what we choose to pursue for children once human labor stops being the price of entry.

What the book argues

The preview

Web development didn't eliminate knowledge and skill — it changed what they were economically worth. Technological intelligence does the same thing to most of the mental labor our economy still pays people to perform.

Two inflection points

TI-mental, where technological intelligence outperforms biological intelligence in most mental labor, and TI-physical, where it does the same to physical labor. Both, by the author's estimate, before 2050.

Survival priority or maximization

One principle organizes itself around scarcity and sorting. The other organizes around expanding the set of real choices available to each person. Only one of them still fits the world these children will live in.

A choice is only a choice when a person has both the freedom and the capacity to pursue it. From the introduction
airick journey crabill

About the author

airick journey "aj" crabill is the founder and owner of Effective School Boards, a governance coaching company, and serves as national director of governance at the Council of the Great City Schools. He previously served as conservator of DeSoto (TX) ISD, deputy commissioner at the Texas Education Agency, and board chair of Kansas City (MO) Public Schools.

His passion to improve student outcomes is rooted in his past: raised in and out of foster care, he attended eleven schools as a child. Full bio