Fighting through the decline

  • Preserving knowledge in the face of extinction

    I try not to be too catastrophic about the impending climate collapse, but it’s hard. Ecosystems are degrading, large parts of the planet are becoming uninhabitable, and societies are fraying. Yet here I am trying to preserve research, data, and information for posterity like somebody is going to find a report about automated vehicles from…

  • The Role of Information Professionals in the unfolding Apocalypse

    This morning the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds until midnight. It’s never been this close to midnight before – but with the real threats of nuclear war, climate collapse, increasing rise of fascism, global economic inequality, and the resulting social unrest it isn’t really a surprise that they moved…

  • The political economy of public agencies manifest in the morass of bad services

    In the spirit of using this place to bookmark ideas to work through concepts and stuff, here it goes. Tuesday at TRB I was in several discussions about how the structural dysfunction of organizations (DOTs) manifest in their data programs. I then commented that the silos of different departments a manifestation of organizational history, and…

  • Hello Again.

    I think I kind of lost steam for blogging because I used Twitter threads to make long points. Twitter made it easier to engage with people who didn’t visit here regularly – which is pretty much most people. And why would they? The rise of platforms like Twitter and Facebook made it easy for people…

  • On space and realities: Navigating late stage COVID

    Precaution during the Spanish Influenza Epidemic would not permit anyone to ride on the street cars without wearing a mask, Seattle, Washington (ca.1918). Original from Library of Congress. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel. flickr photo by Free Public Domain Illustrations by rawpixel shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license I’ve been back in the office daily…