Hello, I’m Justin. I’m an editor and independent researcher, readily nerd-sniped by edge cases and emerging phenomena.

Operating from a home base in the haunted, flood-prone city of York, I use ethnographic methods to uncover hidden meanings and challenge dominant narratives. In my work life, I’ve sought out opportunities to pursue open-ended, exploratory research in different settings. I have:

• Co-founded a research company: Partnered with public and private-sector clients to investigate the diverse contexts in which technologies are imagined, designed, used, and controlled.
• Taught observational methods: Developed and delivered courses and training on ethnographic fieldwork, observational research, and qualitative methods for studying sociotechnical systems and online communities.
• Facilitated workshops: Designed and led participatory workshops with diverse stakeholders, using creative, experimental, and collaborative techniques to explore complex issues.
• Participated in collaborative prototyping: Joined an interdisciplinary team at MediaLab Matadero to conduct exploratory research and prototyping on artificial intelligence and human-machine intimacy.
• Conducted long-term fieldwork: Carried out ethnographic research on the cultural politics of infrastructure in Gujarat, with implications for policymaking and urban planning.

These experiences (and others) instilled a deep appreciation for creative, cross-disciplinary inquiry. Today, I am happiest working with others to decipher complex or uncertain situations, with a particular focus on:

• Appropriate technology: Low-tech, decentralised technologies, tailored to specific contexts and user needs.
• Communities of practice: The dynamics of practical knowledge development and dissemination within groups.
• Translocal processes: The interplay of local practices and global forces, and how this shapes technologies, policy, and the built environment.
• Knowledge bases, repositories, and information retrieval: How people navigate and use information in everyday contexts.
• Improvisation and contingency: How people adapt and innovate in real-time, responding to changing conditions through technology design and use.

Having recently tumbled into the gravity well of generative language models, I am also now trying to learn Python.

Log

Date	Title	Categories
15 Oct 2024	Organised Atoms in Cornwall	workshops, geology, technology, heritage, tools, learning
15 Sep 2024	Latent futures in Cambridge	talks, genai, archiving, prototypes, intimacy, latency, futures
21 Aug 2024	Procedural portraits (2): Empathy and innovation in ‘Eno’	authorship, creativity, empathy, prototypes, documentary, film
17 Aug 2024	Procedural portraits (1): Decoding ‘Eno’s’ generative structure	authorship, creativity, archiving, databases, documentary, film
29 Jun 2024	Dearth	quotes, genai, authorship, creativity, tools
23 Jun 2024	Logical piano: 2024-W25	weeknotes
17 Jun 2024	Barefoot and malleable	quotes, computational thinking, genai
9 Jun 2024	Countless openings	quotes, combinatorics, genai
25 May 2024	Deep play: 2024-W21	weeknotes
17 May 2024	Engrossed: 2024-W20	weeknotes
6 Jan 2024	Choices about what is salient	context
20 Apr 2023	Binnacle	meta

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