Audrey Tang 唐鳳

Rosetta Stone · living document

Next Frontiers · a gift from Sandra Janoff · 25 September 2026

A Rosetta Stone! (first drafted with a question mark, amended to an exclamation mark)

Audrey’s current thinking ⇄ Whole-System Development

Sandra Janoff drafted this stone to translate between two schools that had been working on the same questions from different places. She showed it on a call of 25 September 2026. Audrey read it and changed the question mark to an exclamation mark, since nearly every line holds.

  1. Civic AIStrengthen community capacity; technology designed to serve people and communities

    Whole-System DevelopmentIncrease a human system’s capacity to improve itself

    In conversation“The conditions decide, not the tools. But the tools are the enabling condition for the conditions.”

  2. Civic AIPlurality: preserve difference rather than optimise it away

    Whole-System DevelopmentDifferentiate before integrating, without excluding or forcing unity

    In conversation“Plurality is exactly differentiate before integration: uncommon ground without forcing unity.” Surface the differences that matter and work with them as energy, like geothermal heat, without making the plates agree.

  3. Civic AIBounded, local, inspectable, retirable technology

    Whole-System DevelopmentThe future defines the task. The task defines the system.

    In conversation“Yours is about purpose, and mine is about humility”: to our future, and also to other communities, to more-than-human communities, and to both sides of the AI world’s fiercest divide.

  4. Civic AIWhich materially affected groups are missing or underrepresented?

    Whole-System DevelopmentARE IN: Authority, Resources, Expertise, Information, Need

    In conversationARE IN answers “who is missing?” A race asks who is leading; a mission asks who is missing. It is a stronger formulation of the Civic AI gap check.

  5. Civic AIWho is accountable, with what authority? Are obligations owned, authorised and funded?

    Whole-System DevelopmentAuthority and resources are differentiated parts of the system from the beginning

    In conversationA pre-committed convener, as the default mode: “power with, not power over.” The aim is not a few champions. It is to make broad listening “so default that people are expecting it of all officeholders.” Start with the civil servants who will implement it, through a network of participation officers in every department, so that when elected officials arrive they find “this is just how the state works.”

  6. Civic AITechnology can scaffold participation, listening, translation, pattern-finding and coordination

    Whole-System DevelopmentDesign conditions in which people learn the whole and do the meaning-making themselves

    In conversation“Assemblies are not decision machines.” The recommendations are what comes out of the gym; the real value is the civic muscles people build there:
    • self-reflection
    • reasoning
    • dialogue
    • vulnerability
    • collaboration
    • imagination
    • facilitation

  7. Civic AIJudgment stays with people; systems must remain inspectable, correctable and contestable

    Whole-System DevelopmentSelf-management and responsibility for action

    In conversationA lift can take us up to the gym, but none lifts for us inside it. “Air guitar may be a thing, but what is air-lifting?” “AI” is like “mobility”: it covers a bicycle and a rocket. Build the kind that, like a bicycle, strengthens you as you use it.

Where the scripts differ

Future Search: common ground

Common ground is what everyone in the room explicitly agrees to, one hundred per cent. If anyone says no, it is not common ground. Differences not yet integrated stay in the system as ongoing work.

Plurality: uncommon ground

Bridging finds what people who usually disagree both find helpful, and holds it without forcing unity.

The shared bar: “not just that people can live with it, but that they really agree.”

And the road there: “Construction is struggle. If it’s not struggle, it’s not worth it.”

A line still to be carved

Freon was a good thing when it arrived: it didn’t explode, and it made better fridges. Nobody knew it would open a hole in the ozone.

“What are the unforeseen unknown unknowns of the systems we are developing now? Maybe fifty years of your practice might teach the newest tools what to protect.”

Meanwhile, keep carving together: “Being in the same room, using those tools to build a set of stones together, is as important as disseminating the tools.”

“Take the initiative. Be the agent you want to see in the world.”

Stone drafted by Sandra Janoff with an AI collaborator, from more than thirty years of Future Search practice with Marvin Weisbord. The third register records Audrey Tang’s words from the conversation of 25 September 2026, lightly edited for reading. Published with Sandra’s permission, as a living document open to further annotation.