Inspiration / Lineage

> _ Why talk about lineage?

• To be honest: we are not “yet another social app”, we are a protocol built on decades of work.
• To be clear: our choices are guided by ideas that can be named, studied and challenged.
• To be accountable: if we drift away from this lineage, you have the right to question it.

> _ Douglas Engelbart (core inspiration)

Project WGN is, first of all, an Engelbartian project.

Douglas Engelbart devoted his life to a simple but demanding goal: augment human intellect — raise the “Collective IQ” of groups and societies so they can tackle complex, urgent problems together.

In his work, computers and networks are not toys or media channels. They are working tools integrated into how people read, write, link, decide and remember as a group.

How this shapes WGN

• WGN is designed as a social protocol for work — not just for scrolling and reacting.
• Our first apps, Messaging and Ideas, are two faces of the same Engelbartian goal:
  • Messaging: the “hot flow” where groups talk, coordinate and decide.
  • Ideas: the “long memory” where conversations turn into shared, revisit­able knowledge.
• We see success not as “maximum daily engagement”, but as better coordination, clearer decisions and stronger shared memory in the communities that use the protocol.
• We treat code, methods and governance as a single system: tools, processes and institutions must evolve together if we want real collective intelligence.

> _ Other lines we stand on

Engelbart is the core. Around him, a few other lines help us shape what WGN should and should not become.

Elinor Ostrom — commons and shared governance

Elinor Ostrom showed that communities can successfully manage shared resources when they have clear rules, monitoring, graduated sanctions and ways to resolve conflict — without a single all-powerful center.

• We treat the protocol itself as a digital commons, not as a private estate.
• We work towards clear, documented rules for how the core evolves and who can propose changes.
• We accept that there must be more than one legitimate center of decision (polycentric governance).

Ivan Illich — tools, not institutions that own you

Ivan Illich warned that large institutions can turn tools into systems that trap people instead of helping them. His answer was the idea of convivial tools — tools that people can understand, repair and use without being turned into clients for life.

• WGN is “software only”: we build tools, we do not run a single mandatory platform.
• Your presence is not locked into one app or one company.
• Staying must be a choice, not a dependency we quietly build into you.

Hannah Arendt — public space, not opaque machinery

Hannah Arendt wrote about the importance of a shared public world where people can appear, speak and be seen by others as equals — and about the dangers of systems that erase facts and hide how decisions are made.

• We refuse invisible curation as a default. Ranking and filtering must have visible logic.
• We care about preserving public factual memory— not only hot takes.
• We see moderation and indexing as a form of public responsibility, not as PR.

Architectural inspiration: Satoshi and resilient design

The work behind Bitcoin showed that it is possible to design systems that are hard to shut down from a single point, even under pressure. We are not a currency, but we learn from this kind of architecture.

• We design WGN so that there is no single switch that can silence everyone at once.
• We care about verifiability, auditability and the ability to fork if needed.
• We refuse speculative tokens as the core of our model; resilience is a design goal, not a casino.

> _ What this lineage means in practice

• Tool, not platform: WGN is built to be used, not to be lived inside of.
• Groups first: design starts from what teams, communities and projects need to decide and act.
• Commons, not empire: we aim for governance that can outlive founders and resist capture.
• Daylight over black boxes: curation, moderation and changes to the protocol must be explainable.
• Resilient speech: we work to keep legitimate communication alive even under pressure, within the bounds of U.S. law.
• Freedom with responsibility: speech is protected, but not weightless; there are processes, not whims.

> _ Independence & disclaimer

Project WGN is an independent company. Any mention of Douglas Engelbart or other thinkers on this page is inspiration, not endorsement. They did not design this protocol, and they are not responsible for our choices.

We name this lineage because we believe good infrastructure should say clearly which ideas it serves — and stand ready to be judged by them.