Author: dillonm

From FOSS to profit

Through tracing the historical evolution of these formats, we uncover how digital labor—whether voluntary, outsourced, or co-opted—plays a role in shaping the operations of for-profit technology firms. Open standards, often associated with transparency and accessibility, paradoxically contribute to proprietary goals as well, serving as gateways through which corporations can attract free labor and build out profitable infrastructures. Companies often adopt open standards and Free... [continue reading]

The Amazon Warehouse

Amazon’s warehouses are vast, windowless spaces, each the size of multiple football fields, where thousands of employees and over half a million robots work in tandem to process immense volumes of packages daily. Coordinated by Amazon's AI-powered AWS platform, robots such as Pegasus and Proteus move products efficiently through these facilities, while delivery drivers are monitored closely by AI systems that regulate their behavior... [continue reading]

Interrogating narratives of urban change

Baltimore’s treatment of majority-Black neighborhoods versus Latine/x areas illustrates how racist logics structure urban development. While Latine/x neighborhoods like Highlandtown are framed as vibrant immigrant communities worthy of preservation, Black neighborhoods like Upton are cast as slums primed for exploitation and “renewal.” This distinction impacts how each neighborhood experiences investment or neglect, with Latine/x areas more likely to attract capital while Black neighborhoods face... [continue reading]

The Ground Rent Machine

In Baltimore, Maryland, more than 55,000 homes—roughly 30 percent of all residential plots—are subject to ground rent, a legacy of British feudal property law. Under this landlord–tenant system, the homeowner makes payments to the ground leaseholder, who maintains rights to the land. During the early 2000s, many Baltimoreans fell behind on their ground rent due to recessionary headwinds and were “ejected” from their homes... [continue reading]

National Forgetting in the American South

Using a cultural landscape approach, this study examines all National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) sites in Ouachita Parish, Louisiana, located in the southern United States. The NRHP recognizes sites representative of “our” national heritage by listing them on this registry. From analysis of these records and related archival materials and observations garnered from field visits to select historic sites in the parish, this... [continue reading]

Assessing performance of ZCTA-level and Census Tract-level social and environmental risk factors in a model predicting hospital events

The Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP) strikes again. Using Census Tracts, instead of zip codes (ZCTAs) altered which social determinants of health (SDOH) features were retained during variable selection. [continue reading]

Mapping for Whom?

Scholars have shown that communities of color and low-income communities are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, and without intervention, scientists will miss localized events in these neighborhoods and these communities might go unrepresented in rainfall models, further exacerbating the disproportionate impact. [continue reading]

Doing Critical GIS

In 2019, Taylor Shelton and I organized a series of events at Red Emma's Bookstore and Cafe. This paper is the attempts to bring together many of the themes we saw in the presentations. We focus on "what" we map and "how" we map. For example, how might we think about absences and presences on a map? Why is it that, for example, poverty... [continue reading]

Mapping Juvenile Justice

Our findings suggest that there are several barriers facing Baltimore’s justice-involved youth that may impact access to and engagement with juvenile probation. [continue reading]

Political Ecologies of Platform Urbanism

Infrastructure of the built environment affords the collection of data through situated platform services, its circulation through physical ICT infrastructure, and the materials and energy on which this process depends. [continue reading]