Dorn Cox: Farms as Epicenters of Local Knowledge

Dorn Cox: Farms as Epicenters of Local Knowledge

This week, Dorn Cox introduces us to the modern world of open agricultural technology, and the long history of farmers as stewards of collective knowledge and shared resources. Have you ever heard of a “grange hall [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Grange]”? Well, we hadn’t before this conversation! Join us to discover how farmers today are hacking their own tools, and running long-term experiments into enhancing both local ecosystems and global food systems.We discuss the history of projects like OpenTEAM and FarmOS, open source platforms for farmers who are collecting, analyzing, and sharing agricultural data; the role of Conservation Districts in the US in maintaining social contracts about land use; and what that means for the future of farming and land regeneration. Dorn also takes us through the long history of farms as stewards of knowledge about the land, holders of shared infrastructure for farming, and centers of agricultural research and innovation. Farms already exchange seeds, tools, and knowledge, and we get into how they could be part of the public library system. Overview Timestamps 02:45 Conservation Districts, the USDA’s Conservation Service, and grange movements for knowledge exchange in the US in the 1930s 12:27 Soil management: the Cornell Soil Health Assessment 20:48 Land Stewards: preserving regional biodiversity 25:20 FarmOS and Drupal Farm: an open farm management system 28:18 Aggregating and mapping farmland and conservation data 36:31 Farm innovation: in ancient and modern times 39:12 Farm tool registries: The FAO; appleseed biodiesel designs 49:10 FarmHack: Right to Repair and hardware hacking 58:33 Regen networks: Environmental regeneration through data-driven stewardship 63:50 Farms as libraries; Revitalizing their role as civic infrastructure 71:20 Moving to an abundance economy About Dorn Dorn is a family farmer and system scientist, focused on advancing regenerative agriculture with participatory science and open source hardware. He operates Tuckaway Farm in New Hampshire, is a founder of the FarmHack community and Grassroots Innovation Assembly for Agroecology, and serves as founding director of the Open Technology Ecosystem for Agricultural Management. He recently published The Great Regeneration [https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/the-great-regeneration/] with Courtney White. Mentioned in this episode * Conservation districts: National Association of Conservation Districts Map [https://www.nacdnet.org/general-resources/conservation-district-directory/] * The USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service [https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/] * Natural Resources Defense Council and regenerative agriculture [https://www.nrdc.org/stories/regenerative-agriculture-101] * Federated data and research * The National Grange [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Grange] * Cornell Soil Health Laboratory [https://soilhealthlab.cals.cornell.edu/] * Data Stewards [https://www.protectedlands.net/data-stewards/] for protected lands * Open Agricultural Tech meetings (GOAT): https://goatech.org [https://goatech.org] * OpenTEAM: a technological ecosystem for agricultural management [https://openteam.community/] * FarmHack: https://farmhack.org/ [https://farmhack.org/] * Agricultural Right to Repair [https://farmaction.us/righttorepair/] * Farm OS: https://farmos.org/ [https://farmos.org/] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit capturedpod.substack.com [https://capturedpod.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Bruno Giussani: The Curator's Dilemma

Welcome to Captured, where we explore how knowledge is preserved and lost in our digital era. In today’s episode, you’ll meet Bruno Giussani, a curator who has spent decades seeking out the ideas and people shaping our society. Overview In this conversation, we dive into what it really means to curate knowledge, how the movement of ideas changes over time, and how this can help us make sense of the growing flood of information in the modern world. Bruno describes curation as a blend of discovery, judgment, and storytelling, where the most profound contributions often come from lesser-known experts, whose important perspectives would otherwise go unnoticed. Noting that we live in an era of “infinite information,” where automation and artificial intelligence can generate content endlessly. This abundance offers new opportunities to find and share knowledge, but also challenges us to expand our capacity for discernment and curation fast enough to keep up. In a world where technology can both preserve and distort knowledge, the human art of curation has also never been more vital. Bruno reminds us that the choices we make about what to notice, amplify, and remember will shape the culture and knowledge base that future generations inherit. Timestamps 00:01:50 – Discovering TED00:07:41 – The art of curation, and information overload00:23:32 – Working with Pope Francis00:31:46 – AI and the fragility of systems01:07:55 – The future of cultural knowledge and digital libraries01:17:50 – Advice for young people, the necessity of critical distance to avoid capture About Bruno Bruno was the international curator of TED, the organization best known for its TED Talks, he played a key role in transforming it from an annual conference into a global platform for sharing “ideas worth spreading.” He has curated over a thousand talks from world leaders, scientists, and changemakers, including two talks from Pope Francis, helping their ideas reach new audiences worldwide. His most recent project is the newly released Deftech Podcast [https://atelierdesfuturs.org/la-menace-cognitive] (in French and German), which in its first season investigates the ways AI and neurotech threaten our cognitive integrity. He is working on a book on the same topic; find out more at giussani.com [https://www.giussani.com/]. Mentioned in this episode Organizations: * Forum des 100 [https://www.forumdes100.ch/edition-25] at 25, * the Vatican and its library [https://www.vaticanlibrary.va/en/home.php], * the keepers of the British Museum [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_keepers_of_the_British_Museum], * Borges’ Library of Babel [https://maskofreason.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/the-library-of-babel-by-jorge-luis-borges.pdf] (implementation [https://libraryofbabel.info/]) People: * Nicoletta Iacobacci [https://www.nicolettaiacobacci.com/]: Educating a Superintelligence [https://zenodo.org/records/15640390], why we need an ethics of example * Pope Francis [https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/biography/documents/papa-francesco-biografia-bergoglio.html]: Why the only future worth building includes everyone [https://www.ted.com/talks/his_holiness_pope_francis_why_the_only_future_worth_building_includes_everyone] (2017) Our moral imperative to act on climate change [https://www.ted.com/talks/his_holiness_pope_francis_our_moral_imperative_to_act_on_climate_change_and_3_steps_we_can_take] (2020) * What can be learned from Hernando Columbus and his Library [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1twwcPYNd9m3JvJ3HqfZcjNSLQag1Bn1EGP1I4EH_bvk/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.su1lcq4zgwqv]? (Brewster Kahle, 2022) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit capturedpod.substack.com [https://capturedpod.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Jack Cushman: Libraries and the Data.gov Archive

Welcome to the Captured podcast! For our first episode we interview Jack Cushman, Director of the Library Innovation Lab [https://lil.law.harvard.edu/] [LIL] at the Harvard Law School Library. Our conversation explores the field of digital preservation, through which organizations and communities capture, maintain, and share digital societal knowledge. This is a rapidly changing field, only becoming more essential as everything from schools and libraries to laws, infrastructure, and AI systems become dependent on our shared but impermanent digital records. Jack talked to us about his lab’s work to preserve web pages and public data and protect them from link rot, and to make public domain works more meaningfully accessible: i.e., accessible to anyone with a browser. This includes the Case Law Access Project, which brought 360 years of US case law to the public web, and the Data.gov Archive, which captures a rolling snapshot of public datasets compiled by federal and regional governments in the US. We also asked him about the changing role of libraries, and what individuals and smaller organizations can do to preserve and archive data in our our own lives. Overview 🗃️ Archiving in an era of transience : the End of Term Archive is a long-running project to capture the entirety of the federal web at each presidential transition. Jack describes his lab’s contribution to EOTA, the Data.gov Archive, capturing the datasets indexed by data.gov. 🔗 How can we fight robustly against link rot? Even Supreme Court decisions cite web URLs, and today nearly half those citations already don’t work. Enter projects like Perma.cc, which create reliable web archives so our legal and historical memory stays intact. ⚖️ Making the law accessible for everyday citizens : While in theory U.S. case law is freely available to those who can access a physical repository, the university-led Case Law Access Project recently had to digitize 360 years—over 40 million pages—of case law, overcoming copyright hurdles and opening the door to new legal tech innovation and tools for access to justice. 🌍 The importance and fragility of public data : Public data gives us extraordinary insight into our world; yet sometimes critical city datasets are saved from oblivion on a volunteer’s hard drive. Preservation needs systemic efforts, and lots of copies. 🤝 Models for effective grassroots preservation : Projects like the Data Rescue Project, and Safeguarding Research & Culture (safeguar.de) work alongside established institutions to preserve knowledge; community networks like r/DataHoarder highlight the breadth of public interest. But both need more support. 💾 How to get started as a community archivist : Jack shared some recommendations for how to contribute to global projects and how to start preserving the public knowledge you depend on in your own life and work. Lawful, Good Limericks : The Case Law Limerick Generator [https://museum.lil.tools/archive/caselaw-access-project/caselaw-limericks] draws each line from historical case law… because when data is truly free, anything becomes possible # Timestamps 02:14 The Data.gov Archive and the End of Term Archive 05:34 Public data: Everything you need to make sense of your world10:59 Storage: Where the data.gov archive is stored14:02 Provenance and the historical role of libraries: BagIt, Library of Congress22:23 The Caselaw Access Project: empowering people via access to law36:15 The fragility of public access to essential data 37:29 Addressing link rot with Perma.cc41:40 The current role of libraries for digital records45:45 Grassroots preservation: Data Rescue Project, Safeguar.de, data hoarders 53:33 LOCKSS: Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe 57:37 AI applications for access and preservation1:04:20 How to get started with personal or community archiving 1:08:44 Case Law limerick generator FTW About Jack and Harvard LIL The Library Innovation Lab [https://lil.law.harvard.edu] at Harvard Law School is a software and design lab focused on digital legal research, preservation, and information access. Its wide-ranging projects include Perma.cc [http://perma.cc], an archiving service for scholarly citations, preventing link rot; the H2O open casebook platform [https://lil.law.harvard.edu/projects/h2o], for collaborative creation of legal casebooks; the Case Law Access Project [https://case.law/] (CAP); and the Data.gov Archive [https://lil.law.harvard.edu/blog/2025/02/06/announcing-data-gov-archive/]. Mentioned in this episode Preserving national data * End of Term Archive [https://eotarchive.org] – Archiving US gov. sites and data, every four years * SUCHO [https://www.sucho.org] (Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online) – global volunteer effort * Data Rescue Project [https://www.datarescueproject.org/] – Preserving federal data in the US, building on SUCHO * CourtListener / Free Law Project [http://free.law] – US legal info, court opinions, and case.law Preserving large datasets * Internet Archive [https://archive.org/] – The Web's largest digital library, since 1996 * safeguard.de [http://safeguard.de] – A German index of torrents of large scientific and cultural datasets. * Source Co-op [https://source.coop] – Nonprofit facilitating archival S3 storage for public datasets. Web crawlers and scrapers * Wayback Machine [http://web.archive.org/] – The largest web archive, hosted by the Internet Archive * Webrecorder [https://webrecorder.net] – Provider of high-fidelity web archiving, incl. ArchiveWeb.page [https://archiveweb.page] Other efforts * Environmental Data Governance Initiative [https://envirodatagov.org/] (EDGI) – For climate data. * Public Environmental Data Partnership [https://screening-tools.com/] (PEDP) – For public environmental data. * PubMed [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov] – Search and retrieval of biomedical and life sciences literature. * The LOCKSS [https://www.lockss.org] project (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) – Stanford library initiative * r/DataHoarder [https://www.reddit.com/r/datahoarder/] – a community of 800,000 individual data collectors and archivists. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit capturedpod.substack.com [https://capturedpod.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]