William Raduchel describes growing up in Houghton County, Michigan, as it evolved from a prosperous to a declining area. Starting from a local college, Michigan Tech, a school focused on engineering, on to Michigan State and then to many roles at Harvard, Bill gained a mastery of economics, computer science, and engineering. His career made fascinating transition from automating Harvard's admissions, to creating special software for economic analysis, to achieving top positions at McGraw Hill, Xeros, Sun Microsystems and AOL Time Warner. He explains why some companies grew with technology while others were unable to make technology work for their business success. Bill concludes with perspectives on the growth of Artificial Intelligence and its likely impacts. He explores these and other issues in his forthcoming book, The New Technology State.