New essay: How to Repair a Spaceport
A metaphor for our technological present
The first spark for my essay How to Repair a Spaceport came while sitting on a train from Munich to Venice in the summer, waiting at a station as the operators connected additional train cars for the remainder of the journey.1 Despite this being a common practice for the operators, it retained an improvisational quality. (On the return journey, our tickets were for a train car that was never added.)
While sitting there, I thought about how things fit together: the promise of technological interoperability. Trains are a key example of this promise, with a storied history of track gauge size across sovereignties.2
My thoughts naturally drifted to a context in which I’ve worked. The promise of technological interoperability figures largely in narratives about blockchains, but its approach differs from mainstream discussions about standardization. Of course, this difference could be summarized as “top down” versus “bottom up” approaches to standardization, with the permissionless rhetoric of blockchains hubristically favoring the latter. Still, I felt there could be more nuance in how we think about technological interoperability. I also felt that, whatever their differences, these narratives were in need of repair.3
How to Repair a Spaceport became the exploration of a metaphor that frames how we approach just enough interoperability in the face of technological uncertainties. Spaceports operate in the realm of things like protocols, agentic devices, and “cross-world” media. Ultimately, this metaphor informs infrastructure largely on a pluralistic aesthetic level, intending to offer a narrative antidote to the minimalism of today. It is a first, playful attempt articulate an idiosyncratic, adhoc vernacular without walls: welcome to fellow traveler and unknown visitor alike.
You can read the essay on Folklore, which is a community crafting knowledge of connection, lorecraft, and digital realms. They commissioned my essay as part of their second season. Many thanks to their support.
To be clear, the spark for this essay preceded the Boeing Starliner situation.
“Break of Gauge.” In Wikipedia, August 14, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Break_of_gauge.
I initially conceived of the essay as an aphoristic repair manual that compiled learnings, but such an artifact will be published another time.