We live at a time of great relational deficit.
Modern structures treat trust as an inconvenience — something to craft through contracts, or to wait for rather than to curate. But trust is not a byproduct. It is the result of practice and structural intention, and it can be built — held and created by relational technologies, structures that enable new patterns of connection.
Rather than seeing trust as the base substrate on top of which everything else gets built, modern structures view trust as an inconvenience and an afterthought, something to craft through contracts, or something to patiently wait for rather than intentionally curate; modern technology views trust as an algorithmic and cryptographic issue rather than a complex, embodied network of nervous systems with generational history.
Our culture is not one of relational resilience but of marginal reserves: relational capacity gets built in amounts just barely sufficient, and is hurriedly sought when collaborative structures begin to break down, whether in teams, communities, or intimate partnerships.
Yet, in spaces of relational surplus, we not only work better; we become better. With relational surplus in our relationships to ourselves and others, we create space to listen, speak, and rest. With relational surplus in our relationships to property and commons, we share, and we create conditions for material abundance. With relational surplus in our relationships to time, space, and possibility, we are free to imagine new worlds and begin to bring them into life; and with relational surplus in our relationship to technology, we are free to steward it towards empowerment rather than extraction, away from planetary crises towards collectively created futures.
Trust isn't a
byproduct.
It's the result of practice and intention, and it can be held and created by relational technologies.
The technologies we want to invent
A technology is any structure that enables new patterns of connection — it need not be digital.
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things we could do
A semi-residential institution for inventing the future of relating.
Fellowships, residencies, lectures, courses, retreats, and gatherings — to learn and invent the methods, practices, and technologies that enable new forms of relationship.
a note on the word “technology”
Just as any implementation of democracy is a technology, and a system of taking meeting notes is a technology — any invention of structure that enables new patterns of connection is a technology.
The school does not exist yet.
It remains a dream until the right people and resources come together. This work-in-progress is a search for those people — and now that you have read it, you have become part of the search.
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