Today we can send rockets to land a man on the moon and probes to the planet Mercury. Why is it that on Earth it is more difficult to solve more pressing and superficially simple problems - for example, will it rain in New York next week, what will be the outcome of today's election, or the demand for oil next year? Why does planning for future contingencies cause so much difficulty for those tasked with making decisions—whether they work for private organizations such as banks or run public bodies such as governments and armies? Much of strategic work is an attempt to understand , what's happening. Not just deciding what to do, but the more fundamental problem of understanding the situation. The question "What's going on here?" It sounds corny, but it's not. Over the course of our careers, we have seen time and again how people, immersed in technical issues, busy with everyday concerns, cannot step aside and ask, “What is going on here?” The title of this book and its central concept is radical uncertainty. Uncertainty is the result of our incomplete knowledge about the world or the relationship between our present actions and their future results. Depending on the nature of the uncertainty, such incomplete knowledge can be frustrating or pleasing. I'm afraid of the verdict the judge will make, but I'm looking forward to new experiences from the upcoming vacation. Sometimes we wish we had perfect foresight so that nothing in the future could surprise us, but with a little reflection we realize that such a world would be a boring place.