Today, David Monk asked help spreading the word about this state of affairs: “Heartland Pathways has received very late notification from the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) that an important relocated remnant prairie at the I-57 rest stop near Pesotum is about to be destroyed to make way for expanding sewage facilities. This prairie has […]
The Containerization of the World
Two weeks ago I toured the Port of Tacoma in Washington State during the annual conference of the Society for the History of Technology. Tacoma is one of the top ten container ports in the United States, but it also handles specialized cargo and cars. Commencement Bay, which is a deep-water harbor in southern Puget […]
Informatics and Airports
I just read the fascinating novel by Colson Whitehead, The Intuitionist. This dystopic story of elevator inspectors set the tone for my recent foray into a whirlwind of airports, urban hotels, metro and taxis. The central character in Whitehead’s novel, Lila Mae, intuitively senses the mechanical state of the machines she inspects. As I ran […]
