CatColab 0.2: Wren
2025-02-05
Who are we?
We are a mission-driven non-profit research institute
In a complex and changing world, how can we build a society in which all people and communities can flourish? We believe technology can play a pivotal role, but only if well crafted to be responsive to the values, care, and meaning we each hold.
We research, build, and serve others through new technologies that enable cooperation across difference. We seek to both advance humanity’s capacity for knowledge and compassion, and to help address the pressing, systemic challenges of our time, including risks from emerging technologies, public and global health, and the climate crisis.
What is our approach?
We focus on technologies of collective sense-making
Sense-making is the process of turning raw experience and data into narratives and understanding. To even begin to form common goals, we must first share a sense of what the world is like, attendant to its subtlety, unknowability, and the inevitability of disagreement between distinct perspectives.
We research new technologies that increase capacity for collective sense-making, while also creating a culture of use that is mindful of where technology cannot substitute for what must be done by people.
We view technologies as socio-technical systems
Technology presents itself through new apps, platforms, devices, and tools. Its roots, however, run deep, weaving together questions of who imagined them, what problems they address, who owns them, how they are financed, and how they evolve. We believe carefully and responsibly crafted technologies must fully attend to this complex picture.
What is our work?
We structure our work via four interdependent pillars
1. Fundamental research
Pioneering a mathematical systems science
Technologies encode patterns of perception, thought, and action. The most powerful such patterns are often mathematical, such as optimising a metric, or mapping a social network. Our fundamental research team draws on a rich lineage in the mathematical field of category theory to develop the foundational insights into the processes of collective sense-making and the nature of complex systems that are required for transformative new technologies. In addition to open access scholarly presentations and publications, we seek to be open and inclusive in our team-based research culture, through a commitment to online talks, blog articles, and visiting positions that build community and increase the accessibility of our research process and discoveries.
2. Translational research
Developing tools for collective modelling
Software scales impact, by codifying powerful ideas and making them accessible for use. Our translational research team explores how to translate our new mathematics of collective sense-making into new software libraries and platforms tools that advance practice. While doing so, we’re committed to designing technical, financial, cultural, and governance structures that ensure our tools are aligned with and empower the communities that use them. Concretely, we tackle problems such as collaboratively creating models that can allow us to reason about the safety of complex systems, and participatory modelling of pandemics and public health policy.
3. Societal engagement
Forging new practices for pro-social technology
The research questions we pursue are a direct result of the experiences we have in the world. Although still in early stages, we are committed to robust dialogue and collaboration with those working directly on matters of pressing social concern and those who we seek to serve. At the same time, we nurture a culture and structure in which these questions of values and society deeply influence our research as it unfolds, and we convene conversations about technology’s role in a society that supports the flourishing of all.
4. Institution building
Pioneering new sustainable structures for technology research and development for the public good
New technologies reshape society. Topos is an experiment in a new sort of institution that vertically integrates research, technology development, and public service. We aim to contribute to the search for sustainable models of a new style of institution, complementing academic and for-profit groups, that can help create a world in which the infrastructure of the future belongs to the public.
The latest from our blog
No matching items