About

{CIVIC:UNREST} is made by Shelby Switzer, lover of open data, Oxford commas, and (arguably) overly convoluted syntax.

This is a simple blog made to host thoughts and be a kickstarter for dialogue around the intersection of technology and public infrastructure, or what might be called digital public infrastructure. I write this on my own time, but it’s greatly informed by my career working in and around civic technology and software architecture. To learn more about this project, check out the inaugural post.

You might be wondering, what’s the name “Civic Unrest” all about? Basically, it’s a super nerdy pun. REST is a distributed web architecture paradigm that essentially emphasizes scalability, flexibility, and longevity – traits I think we should aspire to when we build public infrastructure. Unfortunately, advocates of REST have sometimes gotten a bad rap for being pedantic a**holes, and furthermore, REST isn’t always the most appropriate architectural style for a given scenario. “Unrest” in the name therefore speaks to the usefulness of the paradigm as well as the necessity of disentangling ourselves from it and being responsive to needs rather than to a strict ideology – all while capturing that fun and valid feeling of discontent with the current state of civic infrastructure.

Interested in talking to me about civic tech, open data, open source, APIs, or other digital public infrastructure topics? Reach out at shelby [at] civicunrest.com. You can also find my code on Github as switzersc and switzersc-usds.