In 1854 in the Soho district of London England a cholera outbreak was killing people. You probably know this story. Its usually told with a physician named John Snow in the role of hero who […]
Category: Quotes
"Current costs to remove perfluoroalkyl acids (PFAAs), a subclass of PFAS, from the environment at the same rate they are being added were estimated here at 20 to 7000 trillion USD per year."
--Ling, A.L. 2024. “Estimated Scale of Costs to Remove PFAS from the Environment at Current Emission Rates.” Science of the Total Environment 918. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.170647.
The Last Computer
This is a project I’m calling, ‘The Last Computer’. It boils down to these questions: What if I could not buy another computer? How long can I keep the computers I already have in working […]
A World of Repair in 2030
A world of 2030 in which repair could be part of the scaffold that builds it is one based not on efficiency, but sufficiency. — Lepawsky (2020)
When you want to know how things really work, study them when they're coming apart.
William Gibson, Zero History.
The universal machine is local
(E)ven the celebrated ‘universal machine‘ must realize itself materially, therefore locally, in order to function.–Danowski, Déborah, and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. The Ends of the World. Polity, 2017: 116.
Facts are built
Facts are assembled by the work of people in conjunction with instruments, materials, and know-how. A house is built. So, too, is a fact. Despite decades of work in STS, it is still controversial to […]
Changing Waste
Any system that deals with the four aspects of modern waste – tonnage, toxicity, heterogeneity, and externalization – on a large scale will change waste infrastructure and what counts as trash. — Max Liboiron
Electronic Planet Research Lab 