Contocracy Would Rest an AI’s Authority on a Leader’s Lifelong Record
The theme of World Digital Preservation Day 2026, on 5 November, is “Save Our Stories.” Records professionals usually save stories for future readers. A new idea would ask them to save one person’s story so that an AI can be held to it. Picture the Wrenfield Seed Library, a member-run cooperative that lends heirloom seeds. It has adopted contocracy, with its founder, Maren Tolliver, as its contocrat. Her records manager, Dev Okafor, now has an unusual brief. Everything Tolliver writes, decides or annotates must be kept, described and protected for as long as the library exists, because after her death those records will set the limits of what an AI stand-in may decide.
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