“If you already know what recursion is, just remember the answer. Otherwise, find someone who is standing closer to Douglas Hofstadter than you are; then ask him or her what recursion is.” -- Andrew Plotkin

My book on Open Government Data (2012) is the culmination of several years of thinking about the principles behind the open government data movement in the United States. Topics include principles, uses for transparency and civic engagement, a brief legal history, data quality, civic hacking, and paradoxes in transparency.

I’m a locavore who once long ago wanted to be a FBI profiler. I hold a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania where I studied linguistics. When I grow up I want to be a Rupert Murdoch, and to further that goal the departmental signs that used to hang in The New York Times’s old newsroom like “Metro Reporters” and “Maps” now live in my bedroom.

^*Civic hacking is creative use of technology to innovate our civic lives, especially our participation in government.

Some of my photography:

“As certain as my heart is ticking, I'm certain no living chicken // Has ever so clearly commanded a living cook before // With an utterance so clear and shocking that even I could not ignore. // Quoth the chicken, ‘Fry some more.’” -- Alton Brown in Good Eats