When a tiger takes a small child, people usually don't consider it to be an evil being. It's doing what tigers do. Animals are not moral agents; only people are. By the same token, while organizations may have agency, they are not moral agents. It’s an error to think of them as good or evil. (For a contrary view asserting that artificial agents, primarily computer systems but also organizations, can be moral agents in some sense, see Floridi & Sanders, 2004.) (References at the end.)
"in this world, there is one awful thing, and that is that everyone has their reasons" --- attrib. to Jean Renoir (details in the Quotes blog.)
Sunday, August 10, 2025
Friday, August 01, 2025
The Ogregods: An Ogregore Pantheon
I’ve invented a pantheon that represents collective social agents, i.e., ogregores—the “ogregods.”
Sunday, April 27, 2025
Ogregore analogies
Ogregores—organizations that demonstrate collective agency—are all around us but are hard to grasp because they are not human, even though their most important parts are people. I will explore some analogies to get a handle on them, starting with ancient gods and ending with sci-fi hive minds.
Friday, March 14, 2025
Fire and Earth: The Doomed Union of Nex and Daim
Another ogregore story, this time about a failed romance. Not a trickster story, like MoeV Unmasked or Wezl's Ghosts.
Wednesday, March 12, 2025
MoeV Unmasked: An ogregore story
Here’s the second installment of ogregore stories, this one about deception and regulatory capture. It’s another trickster story, just like the first one about Wezl’s Ghosts.
Tuesday, March 04, 2025
Wezl’s Ghosts: An ogregore story
Marissa Grunes has encouraged me to develop mythic stories about ogregores. Here’s my first attempt, about a trickster who used ghosts to fool their ruler.
Saturday, February 01, 2025
Advertising to AIs
Agentic AI is a trending term. If the hype comes true, perhaps all that will be left for humans is to buy things. But what if AIs start clicking on ads?
Thursday, January 23, 2025
Tech & Mythology Project Snapshot – Jan 2025
Tuesday, January 14, 2025
The Goldman Sachs ogregore
A recent Goldman Sachs reorg demonstrates an exception to my claim that “leaders love to take credit for corporate success, bolstering the impression that CEO's determine corporate action.” There’s no mention in the coverage of the CEO.
Friday, January 10, 2025
Hidden complexity in brains and ogregores
Susan Tonkin gave me an intriguing reason why it’s hard to “see” ogregores for what they are, in response to my post Bad Outcomes make it easier to see group agency. She noted that while it’s simple to delimit an organization’s make-up (listing the employees, for example) and easy to see its outputs (like products, jobs, and stock price), we have great trouble thinking through the complexity in the middle.
Thursday, January 09, 2025
Another one ducks the blame
I've observed that leaders love to take credit for corporate success, bolstering the impression that CEO's determine corporate action, but they disappear when things go wrong. American Airlines failed business travel overhaul offers the latest example.
Wednesday, January 08, 2025
Loki as Fixer
I’ve come to to doubt the universal description of the Norse god Loki as a trickster. Perhaps “fixer” would fit him just as well, or better.