Category Archives: Geology

Will our digital lives leave a fossil record?

Posted on May 15, 2020 by Doc Searls

In the library of Earth’s history, there are missing books, and within books there are missing chapters, written in rock that is now gone. John Wesley Powell recorded the greatest example of gone rock in 1869, on his expedition by boat … Continue reading →

Posted in Geology, history, Nature, personal data, problems, Technology | Leave a comment

The universe is a start-up

Posted on March 4, 2020 by Doc Searls

“Pillars of Creation” is a live view of stars forming in a neighboring region of the Milky Way. (Inside the Eagle Nebula, 5,400 to 6,100 light years away.) The Solar System, formed 4.6 billion years ago. Earth became a planet .46 … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, astronomy, Geology, Science, Technology | Leave a comment

Saving the Internet—and all the commons it makes possible

Posted on February 10, 2020 by Doc Searls

This is the Ostrom Memorial Lecture I gave on 9 October of last year for the Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University. Here is the video. (The intro starts at 8 minutes in, and my part starts just after 11 minutes … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Future, Geology, Ideas, infrastructure, Internet, Journalism, Ostrom Workshop | 1 Comment

Geology answers for Montecito and Santa Barbara

Posted on January 27, 2018 by Doc Searls

Just before it started, the geology meeting at the Santa Barbara Central Library on Thursday looked like this from the front of the room (where I also tweeted the same pano): Our speakers were geology professor Ed Keller of UCSB and … Continue reading →

Posted in Future, Geography, Geology, history, infrastructure, Nature, Photography, Places, Research, Santa Barbara, Science, ThomasFire, weather, wildfire | 17 Comments

Making sense of what happened to Montecito

Posted on January 15, 2018 by Doc Searls

Montecito is now a quarry with houses in it: So far twenty dead have been removed. It will take much more time to remove twenty thousand dump truck loads of what geologists call “debris,” just to get down to where … Continue reading →

Posted in fire, Geography, Geology, infrastructure, Journalism, Links, News, Places, Politics, problems, Technology, weather, wildfire | Tagged , , , , | 61 Comments

Revolutions take time

Posted on October 29, 2017 by Doc Searls

The original version of this ran as a comment under Francine Hardaway‘s Medium post titled Have we progressed at all in the last fifty years? My short answer is “Yes, but not much, and not evenly.” This is my longer answer. … Continue reading →

Posted in Geology, Law, Life, Personal, Politics, problems, Technology, war | Tagged | 3 Comments

The biggest bust in Santa Barbara is about to go down

Posted on February 20, 2017 by Doc Searls

Emanuele Orazio Fenzi, better known as Francesco Franceschi (1843-1924), was an Italian horticulturist responsible for vastly increasing the botanical variety of Santa Barbara (introducing more than 900 species). He was also for awhile the primary landowner on the Riviera, a … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Art, Culture, Geography, Geology, Santa Barbara | 2 Comments

Shooting the Bluecut Fire

Posted on August 16, 2016 by Doc Searls

To get away from the heat today—into a little less heat and an excuse to exercise, I drove up to Mt. Wilson, where I visited the Observatory and walked around the antenna farm there. As it happened, the Bluecut Fire … Continue reading →

Posted in Geography, Geology, Photography | 1 Comment

Desert warfare training in live ghost towns, seen from the sky

Posted on June 29, 2016 by Doc Searls

I’ve been fascinated for years by what comes and goes at the Fort Irwin National Training Center— —in the Mojave Desert, amidst the dark and colorful Calico Mountains of California, situated in the forbidding nowhere that stretches between Barstow and … Continue reading →

Posted in Aviation, Geography, Geology, history, Military, Science, Strange stuff, Travel, war | 4 Comments

Oil and Water on California’s South Coast

Posted on March 15, 2016 by Doc Searls

Oil in the water is one of the strange graces of life on Califonia’s South Coast. What we see here is a long slick of oil in the Pacific, drifting across Platform Holly, which taps into the Elwood Oil Field, … Continue reading →

Posted in Aviation, education, Geography, Geology, Health, history, Personal, Photography, Strange stuff, Technology, UCSB | Leave a comment