The introduction provides a historical motivation for undertaking an ontology of motion. The major historical events of global migration, the digital image, and quantum physics are part of a larger shift taking place toward the increasing importance of motion at the turn of the twenty-first century. The exceptions to the rules of the previous static paradigms have now themselves become the rules in a whole new kinetic paradigm. We have entered a new historical era, defined in large part by the primacy of movement and mobility, and are now in need of a new ontology appropriate to our time.