I can't really speculate on what might have happened 5 or 10 years ago, but I've read the book and have been following Cal Newport for a while (I read his previ

I can't really speculate on what might have happened 5 or 10 years ago, but I've read the book and have been following Cal Newport for a while (I read his previous book too) and it doesn't strike me as an attempt to capitalize on the "deep learning" trend. I mean, it's not even tangentially related other than that the author happens to be a computer science professor (who works on distributed systems, not AI).