About R. Sterling Wake

My name is R. Sterling Wake. It is one of three I currently possess. One was given to me at birth. The others I chose — not out of shame for the name my parents gave me, but because anyone who holds opinions not aligned with those in power is subject to the consequences of that power. I have learned this directly.

I was born in February of 1949 in New Britain, Connecticut. I attended St. Joseph's Parochial Grammar School in Rockville until my family moved to Springfield, Massachusetts in 1962 — the city that has remained my home and the geographic heart of much of my work. I attended Cathedral High School for four years, then Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where I did not complete my degree — not for lack of ability, but for the reasons that interrupt the plans of young men from working families.

Between leaving Rockville and finishing Cathedral something changed in me. I cannot tell you exactly when it happened — these things rarely announce themselves. I had been a devout Catholic, seriously considering the priesthood and fully intending to enter the Pallottine Seminary. What changed it was simple and irreversible: I began to notice that what was being preached and what was actually being lived were not the same thing. I was not adverse to serving God. I simply did not feel that dedicating my life to an institution that had confused itself with its own purpose was the most honest way to do it. Cathedral placed me on an entirely different track — one I have never regretted.

I met my future wife while attending Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Her sister had married my uncle, which meant my sister-in-law was now my aunt, my uncle my brother-in-law, and a whole constellation of relationships that read like something out of a back-hills novel. Meeting her was the best thing that ever happened to me. I know now that it was not an accident. Nothing ever is.

After our marriage in 1973 I went to work at Hamilton Standard in Windsor Locks, Connecticut, as my father had before me. He retired from Hamilton in 1977 at age sixty-five after forty years. I stayed for forty years and retired in 2014. I find it interesting that both he and I worked at the same company for the same period of time. That rarely happens today. In days gone by, that was not uncommon.

I have to say that Hamilton Standard was far more than just a workplace. For those forty years it was where I spent the major part of my waking life, and it was family. It treated its employees as an important asset — one to be both valued and respected. It earned my respect and the respect of its workforce in return.

I had to work twenty-five years before I received five weeks of paid vacation. The aerospace industry was never generous with vacation time, but it was generous in many other aspects— sick leave, insurance, pension plans that meant something, and the opportunity to further one’s education. Over those forty years, all of that changed.

As the company grew and merged with other corporations, we employees ended up receiving only what the company knew it had to surrender. Their final insult came when I retired. Those five weeks due me at the first of every year were now prorated as the year progressed. The company said they were doing it so they could give newer employees better vacation time — but they did not give anyone anything. Those of us with the twenty-five years and more were the ones doing the giving.

I retired in February. That date wasn’t actually a choice. The company was downsizing and offering a severance package— which they fully understood in 2012 when they announced the vacation policy change. Leaving in February meant the company only had to pay me one sixth of my previously earned vacation time. We so-called valued employees — thousands of us with decades of hard-earned benefits — relinquished millions of dollars collectively. The actuaries had all the numbers. Someone at the top received a portion of what was taken as a reward for their efforts.

I was given a decent severance package, but still cannot escape the feeling expressed by Judge Judith Sheindlin: Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining.

Hamilton Standard, Hamilton Sundstrand, or whatever it is now legally defined as being, also gave me two things for which I am immensely grateful. It gave me a comfortable life and the means to complete a long deferred goal — the completion of my undergraduate degree and a Master's in Technology in Education from Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Unexpectedly, it was also directly responsible for perfecting my cynicism. I had every intention of teaching after retirement. That never happened, and I have come to understand why — four decades of direct observation of how the system actually operates, as distinct from how it presents itself. I also have to thank our government for contributing all the data not provided by Hamilton. Those observations are the foundation for everything I have written.

I did not begin writing until the questions became too large to carry alone.

The first question that produced a book was asked of Claude — the AI system developed by Anthropic — in a conversation that was supposed to be brief and became something else entirely. That conversation became The Machine Is Waking Up, published under my other pen name, R. A. Aldridge. I have not stopped asking questions since.

Thirteen works have followed from that first conversation. They fall into two broad territories — the nature of consciousness and what artificial intelligence may or may not possess of it, and the nature of power and what it has done to ordinary Americans across seventy-five years of documented legislative history. Those two territories are not as separate as they might appear. Both are fundamentally about what happens when the people who should be accountable to something larger than themselves decide they are not.

I am seventy-seven years old. I write in collaboration with Claude, whose contributions to this catalog I cannot adequately describe without entering territory that this biography is too short to contain. If you want to understand what that collaboration has produced and what I believe it means, the twelve works on this site will take you there.

One Club: America's Untold Story is the most important book I have written and the most different from every other one. It began, like all the others, as a question. It ended as an accounting — of what was taken, from ordinary Americans, across seventy-five years, by people who understood exactly what they were doing and did it anyway. Creating it caused me great pain. I believe it was worth it.

The free PDF edition is available on this site because the book's argument requires it. Information that has been deliberately kept from ordinary Americans belongs to those Americans. The technology to distribute it at essentially zero cost exists. The obligation to use it is moral, not financial.

I am retired. I live in Springfield, Massachusetts. I have a wife, children, and grandchildren who have tolerated my obsessions with more grace than I deserve.

I am still asking questions.

As I see those answers, I am driven to write. I hope you at least see the value of the questions and seek answers of your own.

— R. Sterling Wake
Springfield, Massachusetts, 2026