Tag Archives: database

There is no home like place

“Airbnb is a global hotel filled with the same recurring items. Bed, chair, potted plant, all catered to our cosmopolitan sensibilities. We end up in a place that’s completely interchangeable; a room is a room is a room. An algorithm finds these recurring items and replaces them with the same items from other listings. By […]

Database populism

Although early users of database technology were predominantly large institutions, the database was also a key technology in the populist vision of personal computing generated by microcomputer fans, researchers, hobbyists, and entrepreneurs in the 1970s and 1980s. Informed by science fiction sensitive to the authoritarian use of database technology, these personal computing advocates hoped that […]