{
  "id": "sleeping-giant.unread",
  "term": "sleeping giant",
  "sense": "unread",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "published",
  "level": 15,
  "domain": "agency",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "A thing whose reach is wide while its self-model holds no reading of it, so others see the reach before it does.",
  "folk_gloss": "a great power that has not yet woken to its own strength",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "reach.action",
      "self-model.reflexive",
      "read.information",
      "wide.spatial",
      "others.distinct-entities",
      "see.visual",
      "hold.physical",
      "time.dimension"
    ],
    "interaction": "The reach exists and is large, but the thing's self-model has no reading of it; other systems, whose models are not bound by that self-model, read the reach first. It is the one position in the grid named only from outside.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "SELF-READ absent with OTHERS-READ accurate",
      "reach that is named only in the third person",
      "an actor that others must plan around before it plans at all"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "In 1941 US industry could out-produce Japan several times over but was not yet turned to war; the 'sleeping giant' line credited to Yamamoto comes from a 1970 film.",
      "domain": "history"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "self-efficacy.calibrated",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "SELF-READ absent: no reading at all, rather than a wrong one"
    },
    {
      "id": "paper-tiger.untested",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "the inverse: others read reach that is not there"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "sleeping giant",
    "sleeping giants"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "claude-opus-5-5:hand-curated",
    "date": "2026-09-28",
    "confidence": 0.85,
    "sources": [
      "schema/power-agency-phase.md"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-sleeping-giant.unread"
}