Literate Transparency is the idea that transparency only counts if ordinary people can actually understand what they are looking at.
A system can be “open” in a technical sense while remaining opaque in practice. Publishing source code, audit logs, or dense policy documents may satisfy experts, but for most participants it still feels like a black box.
Literate Transparency treats this gap as a governance failure, because unreadable transparency does not build trust, it just shifts power toward insiders who can interpret it. This is corruption by obfuscation.
Literate Transparency means expressing rules, protocols, and decision processes in constrained, human-centered language that is designed to be read. This often implies a shared vocabulary, short definitions, consistent structure, and examples that explain intent, not just mechanism. The point is not to dumb the system down, but to make its complexity legible.
A practical approach is to pair machine-enforceable logic with a readable “constitution layer,” where the same commitments exist in both forms. The machine layer provides precision and enforcement, while the literate layer provides meaning, context, and social accountability. If the two diverge, that mismatch becomes visible and actionable rather than quietly embedded.
Literate Transparency is a direct response to the Black Box Dilemma. It aims to make complex systems feel navigable, contestable, and trustworthy, without demanding that every participant become a specialist.