In 1963, I took a course on German literature at the University of California. We studied three authors: Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, and Hermann Hesse. That course changed me. It opened a door into a world where intellect, creativity, sexuality, and even drugs intertwined. I still remember the Magic Theatre in San Francisco, where I took LSD for the first time. Later, wandering the streets of Prague where Kafka lived. But it was Hesse who stayed with me the longest. His writing spoke to something both disciplined and spiritual, intellectual and restless.

Now, as I prepare for my keynote at the Edge2025 session of the World Business Forum in Milan, a question keeps circling in my mind: *What will we do when AI and its robot cousin do all the work?*

That question brought me back to Hesse’s last and greatest book, “The Glass Bead Game.” Set in a future society called Castalia, it imagines a world where material struggle has vanished, replaced by a life devoted entirely to knowledge and culture. The most gifted minds play an intricate, almost sacred game that weaves together mathematics, music, philosophy, and science into elegant patterns of meaning. The story follows Joseph Knecht, who rises to become Magister Ludi, the game’s master, only to question the value of a life spent in pure contemplation.

Hesse’s book is both a hymn to the power of the mind and a warning about the dangers of detachment. It asks whether intellect alone can sustain the human spirit. As AI begins to take over the burden of knowing and doing, we face the same question. What will fill the space that work once occupied?

Perhaps, like Hesse’s players, we’ll turn to the deeper game—the one that connects knowledge, beauty, and imagination into meaning. I certainly hope so.