Library

The thinking behind Thistlebridge didn't emerge from nowhere. These are some of the books, people, and ideas we keep returning to — an incomplete map of the intellectual territory.

On Scale and Appropriate Technology

E.F. Schumacher — Small is Beautiful (1973)
The foundational text on appropriate technology and human-scale economics. Schumacher argued that "small-scale operations, no matter how numerous, are always less likely to be harmful to the natural environment than large-scale ones" — and that the same logic applies to human dignity. His concept of "intermediate technology" (tools sophisticated enough to improve productivity but simple enough to be maintained locally) directly informs how we think about local AI infrastructure.

Leopold Kohr — The Breakdown of Nations (1957)
Kohr was Schumacher's teacher, and his central insight was that problems of scale are problems of scale — not problems of ideology, system, or intention. "Whenever something is wrong, something is too big." This applies to governments, corporations, and (we'd argue) technology platforms. The antidote is smallness.

Ivan Illich — Tools for Conviviality (1973)
Illich distinguished between "convivial" tools that extend human capability while remaining under human control, and "industrial" tools that create dependency and require expert management. A bicycle is convivial; a highway system is industrial. The question we keep asking: which category does AI fall into, and can we shift it?

On Place and Pattern

Christopher Alexander — A Pattern Language (1977)
Alexander and his colleagues identified 253 patterns for buildings and communities that support human flourishing — from the scale of regions down to the placement of windows. The method matters as much as the content: patterns are not rules but starting points, meant to be adapted to local conditions. This is how we think about both physical infrastructure and documentation: identify what works, make it transferable, trust people to adapt it.

Wendell Berry — The Unsettling of America (1977)
Berry's critique of industrial agriculture is really a critique of the severed relationship between people and land. "Eating is an agricultural act," he wrote — and by extension, every daily activity is embedded in systems we've been taught to ignore. Berry's work is a reminder that "local" isn't a lifestyle brand; it's a stance toward responsibility.

Stewart Brand — How Buildings Learn (1994)
Buildings change over time, and the best ones are designed to accommodate that change. Brand's "shearing layers" concept (site, structure, skin, services, space plan, stuff — each changing at different rates) applies directly to how we think about infrastructure: build for adaptation, not permanence.

On Growing

Masanobu Fukuoka — The One-Straw Revolution (1975)
Fukuoka's "do-nothing farming" is easily misunderstood. It's not laziness but radical attention — intervening less, observing more, working with natural processes rather than overriding them. His rice yields matched or exceeded industrial methods. The lesson isn't "do less" but "understand what actually needs doing."

Ruth Stout — Gardening Without Work (1961)
Stout's deep mulch method eliminates most of the labor traditionally associated with gardening — no tilling, minimal weeding, reduced watering. She developed it over decades of experimentation in her Connecticut garden. The approach isn't theoretical; it's the product of someone paying attention to what actually worked.

Eliot Coleman — The New Organic Grower (1989)
Coleman proved that small-scale vegetable farming could be economically viable without synthetic inputs. His Four Season Farm in Maine produces year-round using simple season extension techniques. Practical, detailed, and — crucially — honest about what requires effort and what doesn't.

John Jeavons — How to Grow More Vegetables (1974)
The biointensive method: double-dug raised beds, close spacing, composting, carbon farming. Jeavons's research suggests these techniques can produce high yields on small footprints with minimal inputs. The deeper point is about closed-loop systems — outputs from one process becoming inputs to another.

On Narrative and Imagination

Ursula K. Le Guin
Le Guin's science fiction isn't escapism; it's serious thinking about how societies might be organized differently. The Dispossessed (1974) imagines an anarchist society that works imperfectly but works. Her essay "The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction" (1986) argues against the hero narrative in favor of the gatherer's story — collecting, arranging, sustaining rather than conquering. Always Coming Home (1985) imagines a far-future California where people have a selective relationship with technology, using a vast computer network sparingly rather than being dominated by it. She would remind us to hold our plans loosely and keep asking what human life is actually for.

William Morris — News from Nowhere (1890)
Morris's utopia is a world where work has become art and craft, where making things well is the ordinary state of affairs rather than a luxury. It's easy to dismiss as naive, but the question it poses is serious: if abundance were achieved, what would people choose to do?

Murray Bookchin — Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971)
Bookchin argued that technology had made material scarcity obsolete — the problem was social organization, not production capacity. His "social ecology" connected environmental destruction to hierarchical social structures. The relevance now: if AI actually delivers on its productivity promises, what happens next?

On Learning and Knowledge

John Dewey — Experience and Education (1938)
Dewey's educational philosophy centers on learning through doing, in real contexts, with real consequences. Education isn't preparation for life; it is life. This is why Thistlebridge isn't a classroom — it's a functioning household where learning happens through work.

Michael Polanyi — The Tacit Dimension (1966)
"We know more than we can tell." Polanyi's work on tacit knowledge explains why some skills resist documentation — and why apprenticeship remains powerful even in an age of abundant information. You can read about bread-making forever, but at some point you have to feel the dough.

Donald Schön — The Reflective Practitioner (1983)
Schön studied how professionals actually think in practice — not by applying theory but through "reflection-in-action," adjusting in real time to unique situations. This informs how we think about documentation: not rules to follow but patterns to adapt.

On Technology and Society

Lewis Mumford — Technics and Civilization (1934)
Mumford traced how technologies reshape societies — not deterministically, but through the cultures that develop around them. His distinction between "polytechnic" (diverse, human-centered) and "monotechnic" (standardized, system-centered) technologies still clarifies what's at stake.

Jane Jacobs — The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961)
Jacobs's defense of urban neighborhoods against modernist planning is really about the knowledge embedded in complex, evolved systems — knowledge that planners can't see and that gets destroyed by top-down intervention. The same principle applies to communities, ecosystems, and (we'd argue) local technology infrastructure.

Langdon Winner — The Whale and the Reactor (1986)
Winner asked whether artifacts have politics — whether some technologies are inherently compatible with certain social arrangements and not others. His answer was yes, and the question he posed remains urgent: what kind of society does AI infrastructure tend to create?

This list will grow. Some of these influences are fully digested; others we're still working through. If something here resonates, that's probably a sign of alignment.