by Jordan Fulghum, March 2026

I started trying to figure out who my grandfather's biological father was and got far enough to hit the part where the answer, if it exists, isn't anywhere in particular. It's split across a few records and a few people, each holding something incomplete. Which means the only way forward is to start talking to them.

It struck me how rare that pattern has become. Most questions now resolve without requiring anyone else. Technology finds and assembles something that looks like an answer, and the process closes. This is clearly better in a lot of ways, but it also quietly removes one of the few remaining reasons to depend on another person to make sense of something that matters.

There's a difference between talking to people and needing them. Between answers you receive and answers you have to build together. Once you remove enough of those cases, you get efficiency but also a world where understanding becomes solitary.

"A problem is something I can solve, but a mystery is something I am part of." — Gabriel Marcel

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