¶ Idea Tools for Participatory Intelligence · 16 May 2025 essay/tech
The personal computer was revolutionary because it was the first really general-purpose power-tool for ideas. Personal computers began as relatively primitive idea-tools, bulky and slow and isolated, but they have gotten small and fast and connected.
They have also, however, gotten less tool-like.
PCs used to start up with a blank screen and a single blinking cursor. Later, once spreadsheets were invented, 1-2-3 still opened with a blank screen and some row numbers. Later, once search engines were invented, Google still opened with a blank screen and a text box. These were all much more sophisticated tools than hammers, but they at least started with the same humility as the hammer, waiting quietly and patiently for your hand. We learned how to fill the blank screens, how to build.
Blank screens and patience have become rare. Our applications goad us restlessly with "recommendations", our web sites and search engines are interlaced with blaring ads, our appliances and applications are encrusted with presumptuous presets and supposedly special modes. The Popcorn button on your microwave and the Chill Vibes playlist in your music app are convenient if you want to make popcorn and then fall asleep before eating most of it, and individually clever and harmless, but in aggregate these things begin to reduce increasing fractions of your life to choosing among the manipulatively limited options offered by automated systems dedicated to their own purposes instead of yours.
And while the network effects and attention consumption of social media were already consolidating the control of these automated systems among a small number of large, domination-focused corporations, the Large Language Model era of AI threatens to hyper-accelerate this centralization and disempowerment. More and more of our individual lives, and of our collectively shared social existences, are constrained and manipulated by data and algorithms that we do not control or understand. And, worse, increasingly even the humans inside the corporations that control those algorithms don't actually know how they work. We are afflicted by systems to which we not only did not consent, but in fact could not give informed consent because their effects are not validated against human intentions, nor produced by explainable rules.
This is not the tools' fault. Idea tools can only express their makers' intentions and inattentions. If we want better idea tools that distribute explainable algorithmic power instead of consolidating mysterious control, we have to make them so that they operate that way. If we want tools that invite us to have and share and explore our own ideas, rather than obediently submitting whatever we are given, we have to think about each other as humans and inspirations, not subjects or users. If we want the astonishing potential of all this computation to be realized for humanity, rather than inflicted on it, we have to know what we want.
At Imbue we are trying to use computers and data and software and AI to help imagine and make better idea tools for participatory intelligence. Applications, ecosystems, protocols, languages, algorithms, policies, stories: these are all idea tools and we probably need all of them. This is a shared mission for humanity, not a VC plan for value-extraction. That's the point of participatory. The ideas that govern us, whether metaphorically in applications or literally in governments, should be explainable and understandable and accountable. The data on which automated judgments are based should be accessible so that those judgments can be validated and alternatives can be formulated and assessed. The problems that face us require all of our innumerable insights. The collective wisdom our combined individual intelligences produce belongs rightfully to us. We need tools that are predicated on our rights, dedicated to amplifying our creative capacity, and judged by how they help us improve our world. We need tools that not only reduce our isolation and passivity, but conduct our curious energy and help us recognize opportunities for discovery and joy.
This starts with us. Everything starts with us, all of us. There is no other way.
This belief is, itself, an idea tool: an impatient hammer we have made for ourselves.
Let's see what we can do with it.
They have also, however, gotten less tool-like.
PCs used to start up with a blank screen and a single blinking cursor. Later, once spreadsheets were invented, 1-2-3 still opened with a blank screen and some row numbers. Later, once search engines were invented, Google still opened with a blank screen and a text box. These were all much more sophisticated tools than hammers, but they at least started with the same humility as the hammer, waiting quietly and patiently for your hand. We learned how to fill the blank screens, how to build.
Blank screens and patience have become rare. Our applications goad us restlessly with "recommendations", our web sites and search engines are interlaced with blaring ads, our appliances and applications are encrusted with presumptuous presets and supposedly special modes. The Popcorn button on your microwave and the Chill Vibes playlist in your music app are convenient if you want to make popcorn and then fall asleep before eating most of it, and individually clever and harmless, but in aggregate these things begin to reduce increasing fractions of your life to choosing among the manipulatively limited options offered by automated systems dedicated to their own purposes instead of yours.
And while the network effects and attention consumption of social media were already consolidating the control of these automated systems among a small number of large, domination-focused corporations, the Large Language Model era of AI threatens to hyper-accelerate this centralization and disempowerment. More and more of our individual lives, and of our collectively shared social existences, are constrained and manipulated by data and algorithms that we do not control or understand. And, worse, increasingly even the humans inside the corporations that control those algorithms don't actually know how they work. We are afflicted by systems to which we not only did not consent, but in fact could not give informed consent because their effects are not validated against human intentions, nor produced by explainable rules.
This is not the tools' fault. Idea tools can only express their makers' intentions and inattentions. If we want better idea tools that distribute explainable algorithmic power instead of consolidating mysterious control, we have to make them so that they operate that way. If we want tools that invite us to have and share and explore our own ideas, rather than obediently submitting whatever we are given, we have to think about each other as humans and inspirations, not subjects or users. If we want the astonishing potential of all this computation to be realized for humanity, rather than inflicted on it, we have to know what we want.
At Imbue we are trying to use computers and data and software and AI to help imagine and make better idea tools for participatory intelligence. Applications, ecosystems, protocols, languages, algorithms, policies, stories: these are all idea tools and we probably need all of them. This is a shared mission for humanity, not a VC plan for value-extraction. That's the point of participatory. The ideas that govern us, whether metaphorically in applications or literally in governments, should be explainable and understandable and accountable. The data on which automated judgments are based should be accessible so that those judgments can be validated and alternatives can be formulated and assessed. The problems that face us require all of our innumerable insights. The collective wisdom our combined individual intelligences produce belongs rightfully to us. We need tools that are predicated on our rights, dedicated to amplifying our creative capacity, and judged by how they help us improve our world. We need tools that not only reduce our isolation and passivity, but conduct our curious energy and help us recognize opportunities for discovery and joy.
This starts with us. Everything starts with us, all of us. There is no other way.
This belief is, itself, an idea tool: an impatient hammer we have made for ourselves.
Let's see what we can do with it.