Keeping a founder’s office as well as her lessons

Contocracy names the other path. A community that aAdopts it decides, usually at its founding and on terms the founder sets, that one particular person's judgment is the point. Lessons guide people who bring their own judgment; a contocracy keeps the person whose judgment it wanted, through death and a possible return. For a garden like Kestrel Hill, the appeal is a vision that does not drift. Donors and visitors know whose taste shapes every bed, and they know it will not change with each new director.

None of this is advice for Apple or any other existing company, and it is no comment on how they are led. Contocracy is a new option for communities that choose it. It is most likely to suit missions that never end and that rest on one person's values and taste: a garden meant to grow for centuries, a research foundation, a religious community or, one day perhaps, a city.

Why name it now

New technology is what makes this worth a name. Keeping a lifelong record of decisions and reasons is already easy. AI systems may one day apply a particular person's reasoning to new problems with real fidelity, and research on cryopreservation continues. Together, these possibilities make a community that keeps its founder's office conceivable for the first time.

When something genuinely new becomes possible, it helps to have words for it before the debate begins. If Petra's garden caught your interest, I hope you will use the words contocracy and contocrat when you write or talk about the idea.