The Arc of People Power was created by one person over a long period of time.

I am not a historian, political scientist, or subject-matter expert on most of the topics presented here. My background is in art, intercultural inquiry, and web design and development. The core ideas behind this project — especially the emphasis on context, comparison, multiple ways of understanding, and the relationship between culture and power — come from many years of personal reading, observation, and reflection.

Much of the detailed historical content of the Arcs was researched, organized, translated, summarized, or expanded with the assistance of AI systems, especially ChatGPT. AI was used throughout the project in different ways: helping brainstorm structures and interfaces, organizing information, drafting and revising text, comparing historical patterns, assisting with translation, troubleshooting programming problems, and helping identify possible cultural or historical connections. In all cases, I worked to ensure that material was grounded in verifiable events and documented sources rather than invented or speculative claims, and that source material and creative work were properly attributed wherever possible.

At the same time, I have mixed feelings about the broader AI ecosystem itself — particularly regarding the use of copyrighted writing, art, music, and other creative work in the training of many AI systems without clear consent, compensation, or acknowledgment. Many artists, writers, translators, and researchers have expressed legitimate concerns about this, and I take those concerns seriously.

I also recognize that without AI assistance, a project of this scale would likely not have been possible for me to build or publicly launch in its current form. Given limited resources and the desire to launch a working public prototype during this particular historical moment, AI became both a practical tool and a significant aid in shaping the prototype, despite the ethical tensions involved. Other AI systems were sometimes used to compare answers or test consistency. Final editorial decisions, design direction, curation, and implementation remain my responsibility.

That said, I cannot personally verify every historical claim, translation, interpretation, or framing presented on the Arc of People Power. Some sections are grounded in subjects I know relatively well through my own reading and experience. Other sections rely heavily on AI-assisted synthesis of information drawn from books, journalism, archives, public databases, and other sources. Like all systems — including human ones — AI systems can oversimplify, distort, omit context, reflect bias, or present uncertain information with too much confidence.

My hope is for the project to evolve collaboratively over time. My vision is for the content to grow through the contributions of an international community of people interested in history, research, translation, education, and the arts — especially people whose lived experience connects directly to the subjects being explored.

Images, music, quotations, and cultural materials were selected through a combination of personal research and AI-assisted discovery. Wherever possible, I attempted to identify creators, licenses, archives, and attribution information responsibly. The project also builds upon the work of countless historians, journalists, archivists, photographers, translators, musicians, writers, technologists, activists, and people whose labor, documentation, creativity, scholarship, and lived experiences made this material available in the first place.

This project is also unfinished by nature. It is not meant to be a final authority on history, culture, repression, resistance, or democracy. It is an experiment in creating structures that help people explore difficult questions from multiple angles and across cultural boundaries.

Some histories, perspectives, and lived experiences are represented here; many others are absent, unevenly explored, or missing entirely. What feels visible, central, overlooked, or ignored is not the same for everyone.

Part of this project is learning to recognize those differences rather than pretending they do not exist.

If there is one thing I hope this page makes clear, it is that this project did not emerge from AI, nor solely from my own expertise. It emerged from an ongoing collaboration between human intention, technological tools, historical materials, artistic influences, and many years of trying to imagine a different way of learning about one another.