infrastructure as culture

Neoliberals’ political analysis was even worse than their economics, with perhaps even graver consequences. Friedman and his acolytes failed to understand an essential feature of freedom: that there are two kinds, positive and negative; freedom to do and freedom from harm. “Free markets” alone fail to provide economic stability or security against

Changing a culture is a major undertaking, and a data culture is no exception. But thinking of these issues as cultural in the first place can help to open the imagination

It’s also something that I encourage people to investigate with their own practices. There’s so much that you can do beyond just making your thing. You can also work on the whole system of getting that thing and others like it out into the world. There’s a lot of room for expansion and creativity there. I think the coolest projects look at the

We want nothing less than entire communities aping into a redefinition of public concern. The opportunity in front of us is bigger than any one protocol. In today's world, capital is not scarce; ambitious visions for the public's benefit are.

ohn Podesta, a senior advisor to the Biden White House on clean energy, put it bluntly: “We got so good at stopping projects that we forgot how to build things in America.”

Simply cutting out the process works in rebuilds. A concentrated group of people want their highway back more than they want a new thing, loss aversion and all that, and disaster brings the attention and will needed to push things through. Even California was able to rebuild quickly after the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, reopening the Santa Monica

Over the past two weeks, Pennsylvania turned an infrastructure project into a sporting event. It livestreamed construction. It made heroes of tradespeople. It brought in local sponsors. It took the internet’s blessing and curse – its ability to firehose attention onto seemingly small things – and used it to its advantage.

A big part of the reason America can’t build like we used to is that we’re victims to the tyranny of the minority. A small group of people with strong opinions, and a lot of free time, can block things that are supported by the majority of the population. The people who are willing to show up to community meetings have an outsized say in what gets