Book / 01
Seeing Like a State
James C. Scott
A durable warning about what gets lost when complex lives are made legible to institutions.
References & returns
The Library.
A working shelf of ideas I return to. Some help me think. Others remind me to think differently.
Books, essays, methods & tools
Eight things on the shelf. Many trails out.
Book / 02
The Mushroom at the End of the World
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
A companion for thinking about collaboration, precarity, and life in damaged systems.
Book / 03
The Timeless Way of Building
Christopher Alexander
A generous argument for patterns that grow from living use, not abstract order.
Essay / 04
The Garden and the Stream
Mike Caulfield
A useful distinction between knowledge that flows past and knowledge tended over time.
Book / 05
Tools for Conviviality
Ivan Illich
A sharp lens for asking whether a tool expands agency or quietly takes it away.
Method / 06
Situated interviews
Field method
Talk where the work happens. The room, interruptions, and improvised fixes are part of the answer.
Tool / 07
Obsidian
Local-first notes
Plain files, patient links, and enough structure for ideas to meet again later.
Book / 08
The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
Ursula K. Le Guin
A small, freeing text about stories that hold things rather than conquer them.