“Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.”
—
Kranzberg’s
First Law
I’m the Technical Lead of the IAU Minor Planet Center at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. I spend most of my time designing and building astrophysical data systems. Underpinning this work is my preoccupation with all of the ways that computers could be revolutionizing science and society — but aren’t yet.
Contact me on Mastodon as @pkgw@mastodon.world or over email at peter@newton.cx. Find out more on my About Me page, or by subscribing to my lightweight newsletter — I use it to send out links to the posts that I write here on this website:
You can also cut out the middleman and add my RSS/Atom feed to your preferred newsreader.
Latest post:
2025 January 9
It’s a new year, and hot on the heels of some other good news, here’s another development: last week I started as the new Technical Lead of the IAU Minor Planet Center! The MPC is based at the CfA, so I’m not going anywhere physically, but nonetheless this is a big, exciting step for me.
Recently: