Conversations, presentations, and readings about democratizing smart technology such as Artificial Intelligence to benefit everyone and reshaping our civilization for beneficial outcomes and a better future in the Smart Technology Era. It takes us on a holistic sense-making journey and lays a foundation to synthesize a more balanced view and better understanding of smart technology, its applications, its benefits, its risks, its limitations, its progress, and its likely future paths. Our current civilization is on a problematic trajectory where we struggle with sense-making, meaning-making, wealth gaps, job loss, catastrophic risks, discrimination, data abuse, bias, human agency, dependence lock-in, institutional decay, disorder, and destabilization of society. We need visionary leadership, collective sense-making, wisdom, and practical actions to ensure that humanity and our civilization is moving in the right direction as we work towards unlocking the tremendous potential of smart tech.