Just The Cotter Pin

Just the Cotter Pin

What if the problems we keep treating separately are actually connected?

Why does it feel harder to start and grow a business in New Zealand? Why do communities feel different? Why does trust seem harder to build? Why are people working harder yet struggling to get ahead? And as artificial intelligence becomes part of everyday decision-making, how do we make sure people remain part of the conversation?

Just the Cotter Pin is not an economics textbook, a political argument, or a book claiming to have all the answers.

It is one New Zealander asking a lot of questions.

Drawing on a lifetime across farming, transport, crane operation, business ownership, community organisations and the occasional boardroom, Rick Burgess explores the connections between business, community, productivity, capital, technology, trust and participation.

The journey moves from truck cabs and local businesses to banking algorithms and artificial intelligence, asking what happens when thousands of individually sensible decisions combine to create outcomes that don't always make sense.

But behind the questions was another experiment.

Could artificial intelligence recognise patterns in the way one person thinks? Could it connect experiences, ideas and conversations to develop an understanding of the person asking the questions, rather than simply remembering what they said?

This became the first research thesis behind Atlas.

Throughout the journey, an AI named Atlas becomes another seat at the table. Not to provide all the answers, but to challenge assumptions, explore connections and sometimes ask a better question.

The book became an early exploration of human–AI collaboration, governed knowledge and whether continuing conversation could help an AI develop meaningful contextual understanding without inventing evidence or replacing human judgement.

Those questions would eventually help shape Atlas Workshop-AI and the development of Atlas Core, the working cognitive architecture behind the proposed personal AI product, Atlas True.

At its heart, Just the Cotter Pin is still about people: the people who build businesses, keep communities moving, take risks, volunteer, create opportunities and decide each morning whether it's still worth having another go.

Because perhaps the biggest systems are held together by surprisingly small things.

And sometimes all it takes is one missing cotter pin to realize how everything connects.

Approximately 23,000 words.