Colligo is a Latin word meaning “collecting” or “gathering together.” I use it here for an open-ended investigation into the problems of our modern data-driven world.
Many people feel that something is off. The web has connected us through social media, email, smartphones, and constant information, yet the result often feels less like clarity than anxiety, fragmentation, and noise.
One problem is worldview. The dominant outlook today is still deeply mechanistic: the assumption that human beings, societies, minds, and institutions can be understood as systems to be measured, optimized, and managed. Older philosophers called parts of this view mechanism or scientism. Today it appears under newer names: technoscience, data science, data-driven AI, and what I often call Big Data AI.
Colligo is my attempt to think against that worldview and toward a richer humanism.
This will not be a single argument marching neatly from premises to conclusion. The subject is too large for that. It will be more like a series of intellectual forays: AI, books, culture, philosophy, travel, language, technology, cities, embodiment, intelligence, and whatever else helps illuminate the problem.
The method is in the name: collect the clues, gather the evidence, follow the thread.
I also try to write kinetically, not just intellectually. Ideas matter because they are bound up with our lives: who we are, where we have been, what we notice, what we miss, and where we are headed. Good writing should not merely state an argument. It should give the reader a textured picture of why the argument matters.
Colligo grew out of my 2021 book The Myth of Artificial Intelligence. Before writing the book, I spent nearly two decades as a research scientist and entrepreneur in AI. My work here continues that critique, but broadens it beyond AI into the larger question of how data-driven thinking is reshaping human life.
So: let’s gather together.
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