Five variables for reading any situation.
Every human situation — a war, a classroom, a kitchen table — is structured by the same five variables. PLITO is a disciplined way of asking what each one is doing, and what their interaction produces.
Meaning is a structured outcome.
Most analysis fails not from lack of information but from lack of structure: we notice what we are already disposed to notice. PLITO counters this by requiring the analyst to pass every situation through all five lenses, including the ones that feel irrelevant. The variable you are tempted to skip is usually where the situation is actually being decided.
PLITO is deliberately a heuristic, not an equation. It does not predict; it discloses. Its claim is modest and testable: a person who systematically asks the five questions will see more of a situation than a person who does not.
One framework, every scale.
The same five questions apply to high-level diplomacy and to a child's homework. That range is the point. Three applications, with more in development:
Conflicts Map
An interactive map of ongoing conflicts, each structured for a sociological PLITO breakdown of high-level diplomacy.
Open the map → NarrativeA Child Learns Algebra
A full walkthrough: one ordinary scene re-read through all five lenses, showing how mundane becomes analytically rich.
Read the demo → Current affairsPolitical Events
A growing collection of PLITO analyses of political events as they unfold.
Browse analyses →A framework that scrutinises itself.
PLITO's first test case is PLITO: who designed it, from what position, doing what labour, assuming what ideas, with what tools, producing what objects? The Limits page sets out openly where the framework's boundaries, tensions, and open questions lie.