H2G2 does not sit neatly inside one familiar category. When someone first hears about it, they may try to classify it as one of these: - an AI product - a publishing platform - a wiki - a civic deliberation project - a DAO / commons governance system - an arts and culture project - a festival / event format - a grant-funded social impact project - a media brand - a game - a movement
But none of those is quite right on its own.
# Brand Problem That creates a brand problem, because people usually understand new things by asking: > What kind of thing is this?
If we do not answer that clearly, people either get confused or they force H2G2 into the wrong box.
# What is H2G2? H2G2 is not simply an AI tool, a media brand, a wiki, a civic assembly, a DAO, or an arts project. It borrows from all of these, but its real category is something more specific: > An AI-native participatory Guide-making system. A way for people, communities, AIs and other intelligences to create Guides to real-world problems, places, futures and decisions.
Or, more poetically in your wiki style: People understand new things by placing them in old boxes. H2G2 does not fit comfortably in the old boxes. It is partly a Guide, partly a Civic Assembly, partly a Publishing Platform, partly an AI Companion, partly a Game, partly a Commons, partly a joke, and partly a very serious attempt to help civilisation ask better questions. The brand task is not to choose one box and kill the others. The task is to name the new category clearly enough that people can enter it.
So the strategic question is: > Do we describe H2G2 as belonging to an existing category, or do we create a new one?
My instinct is: use an existing category as the doorway, but name the new category once people are inside. For example: Doorway category: A participatory publishing project. Deeper category: An AI-native Guide-making system for collective intelligence. Mythic category: The Earth Edition of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Life, the Universe and Everything.