Robin of the Hood | the Digital Woods | Conversations With LLMs

In this retelling of Robinhood, the Merry Men distribute freedom through CI systems

In the cruel reign of King Zohn, who taxed the data and the streams of thought from his common subjects while feasting upon algorithmic bounty with his chosen barons, there lived a man called Robin of Locksley.

Robin, once a noble in the king's digital court, had seen firsthand how the monarch hoarded the decision-making powers that rightfully belonged to all. Upon his return from the great Algorithm Wars in distant lands, he found his ancestral access privileges revoked, his family's nodes disconnected, and the commons suffering under tyranny.

"What is this new tax?" Robin asked an elder peasant woman struggling to access the village's wisdom pool.

"'Tis the Identity Verification Fee, m'lord," she replied, her voice low with sorrow. "Twenty gold pieces to speak our minds in the town's council forums. Few can afford it now."

That night, Robin fled to Sherwood Server Farm, where others like him had gathered—Will Scarlet, a brilliant cryptographer; Friar Tuck, once keeper of the monastery's distributed ledger; Little John, a towering systems architect; and Marian, who had built unauthorized mesh networks connecting the forgotten villages.

"We shall take from those who hoard decision-making power and distribute it to those who truly own it—the people themselves," declared Robin.

And so began their campaign. Under cover of darkness, Robin and his band would infiltrate the Sheriff of Nottingham's centralized databases, liberating copies of Consul Democracy—a system allowing citizens to propose ideas, deliberate together, and vote directly upon matters affecting their lives.

"What sorcery is this?" gasped a blacksmith's apprentice upon receiving a small device enabling anonymous and secure participation in village governance.

"No sorcery," smiled Robin. "'Tis but the rightful inheritance of every person—a voice that cannot be silenced and a vote that cannot be bought."

The Sheriff hunted them relentlessly, deploying sophisticated tracking algorithms and armed guards to protect the monopolies of power. Yet Robin's band remained elusive, their philosophy spreading like wildfire through the oppressed communities.

One autumn day, Robin ambushed a royal convoy carrying the newly designed centralization protocols.

"Stand and deliver!" he commanded the startled guards. "Your consensus mechanisms or your lives!"

Without bloodshed, Robin's band seized the technical documentation and, more importantly, the access keys to the kingdom's governance infrastructure.

That winter, something remarkable happened. Villages began solving their own problems. Community decisions emerged organically through the distributed platforms. Resources flowed more equitably. Innovation flourished where once there was only compliance.

King Zohn, enraged by reports of this flourishing autonomy, declared, "These digital outlaws corrupt my realm with dangerous notions of collective wisdom!"

The final confrontation came during the Midsummer Festival, when the Sheriff's forces surrounded the Server Farm. As arrows flew and swords clashed, something unexpected occurred—the King's own knights began laying down their weapons.

"We have used Consul Democracy ourselves," declared the captain of the guard. "We have tasted true representation. We will fight no more against it."

King Zohn, facing widespread adoption of distributed governance, reluctantly issued a royal charter recognizing the people's right to participate in decisions that shaped their lives.

Robin of Locksley, no longer an outlaw, helped build a new system where power flowed not from the top down but from the many to the few who would temporarily steward it.

"Think not that I have come merely to redistribute gold," Robin told the assembled people at the Great Charter signing. "Nay, I have come to return to you something far more precious—your collective voice, your rightful power to shape your own destiny. For what is a kingdom if not the wisdom of its people made manifest?"

And so it was that Robin Hood, the digital disseminator, changed the governance of the realm forever, not through violence but through the unstoppable power of collective intelligence.

Written by Claude 3.7 Sonnet

Prompt: As an author writing in 2025 and heavily influenced by Shakespear, Balaji Srinivasan and Mark Kurlansky, retell the story of Robin Hood, but he is distributing collective intelligence systems like Consul Democracy.