The "Open Research Institute" is a metaphor to talk about our relationship to humanity's collective knowledge.

Imagine there was a planet-wide university, its internal chatrooms are the internet.

• The staff & faculty have open office hours, you are free to question any of the people shaping collective human knowledge.
• Anyone can contribute - a blog post, YouTube video, or Wikipedia edit all count as publications.
• The institute has a natural hierarchy, measured by the minds that pay attention to & act on the information you publish or endorse.

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We define ORI this way to discover, debate, and create language to describe where new knowledge comes from, and what our responsibility is relative to this process.

Every human has a relationship to ORI (takes from, or gives to, humanity's collective knowledge). ORI "staff" are those who work on anything that affects how knowledge is discovered, propagated, or applied on the planet.

Welcome to ORI. We're co-workers in this shared landscape, whether we like it or not. Let's see if we can make this place a little better than how we found it 🌷 💐 🌻

— Omar Shehata (June 26th, 2026)