Research
Limits
Ceilings on growth, use, and scale, from planetary boundaries to the size of a tool.
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Shifting baselines and the second watershed
In 1995, Daniel Pauly named the way we quietly lose track of our place in an objective decline and become blind to impending ruin: shifting baselines. They apply to systems and tools as well as fish populations. Counterfoil’s tool catalogue…
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Before the second watershed
Ivan Illich proposed counterfoil research to detect the corruption of useful, widely adopted technologies before the rot set in. (Think Cory Doctorow’s “enshittification” in webtech.) Let’s look at where that early corruption lies on the road to Illich’s second watershed.…
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Nemesis, the goddess of limits
The Greeks worshipped Nemesis as a goddess of equity and equilibrium — the balance of life within limits. Over two thousand years, Nemesis shrank into a word for revenge. Today she returns as a term for the structural, endemic harm…
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Six ways of making coffee: which is best?
A moka pot, a Turkish pot, a French press, an AeroPress, a drip machine, and an espresso machine: which one can I most easily understand, repair, and replace? And which makes the best brew?
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Why more makes less
Self-sabotage, counterproductivity, iatrogenesis, and Nemesis — from ancient to modern times, from road congestion to software, humans have described the same patterns.
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Holding, tipping, lost
How do you tell a tipping scale from one that’s tipped over? This is the first test for our catalogue’s evolving method, where we use the terms holding, tipping, and lost. Let’s look at one example of each and what…
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Ellul, Charbonneau, and Illich
Illich called Jacques Ellul his master. Ellul said his best-known book belonged as much to Bernard Charbonneau as Ellul himself. What the two men from Bordeaux saw first, and what Illich did with their ideas.
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Limits are a design brief
For tool design, limits and scope are not obstacles to engineer around; they define the most essential features — the ones that will not be included.