Notebook

When presented with an overwhelming amount of information, how can we understand what’s actually important? Since the onset of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, researchers who have been examining the genome of the virus across its many variants have been both helped and hindered by the unprecedented amount of data that has been collected on the disease. As part of our ongoing effort to create a suite of tools for working with SARS-CoV-2 sequencing data, we saw the challenge of the ever-shifting nature of the virus as an opportunity to help our collaborators hone in on the most relevant mutations when presented with a new lineage.

What does a world look like in which pathogens are as trackable as rain or shine? How can we better understand our relationship to the diseases that circulate around us over the course of days, months, and seasons? Over the past few months at the office, we’ve been undertaking a speculative exercise around the concept of “pathogen weather” to look at exactly that.

In this speculative exercise, also known as “Pathogen Weather” around the office, we considered the kinds of information that would be useful for a speculative society proactive about disease prevention — imagine we were as attuned to the waves of RSV as we are with the changing seasons.

In early 2022, the team was talking about generating imaginary science-fiction book covers. Paul started some sketches of this generator, and after a few iterations of the titles and cover art for these books, he had a catalog. As the team reviewed the catalog, with books such as ‘Situation Under A Mausoleum’, ‘Courtyard 15’, and ‘New York Heliosphere’, we mused that we should generate the text of the books themselves.

This side project is an exploration of lo-fi generative art. My initial idea was to spin up titles for speculative novels  —  a serendipity engine for an imaginary bookshelf. Often, machine learning is used to mimic style and syntax when working generatively with text, but I was curious to see where a looser and less sophisticated process might lead.

After a decade-long run, we've decided to shut down the “3rd Floor” shop. Originally named after the room that had housed our printed material and shipping supplies at 214 Cambridge Street, we continued shipping everything from a portrait of the collaborations of Miles Davis to a visual inventory of Wikipedia.

This was originally intended to be a spring 2021 e-mail, which became a summer update, then it was gonna be “goodbye to our intern” in August, then part of it was spun out as its own post in October. Finally it was gonna wrap up the year and now… here we are to kick off 2022! (On the 25th day of January.)

For years, Pardis Sabeti has tried to get funding to build the necessary tools to mitigate the “next pandemic.” On the front lines of the Ebola outbreak in 2014, she saw firsthand all the ways in which institutions and infrastructure broke down. Most simply, the time to act is not during a crisis — when people are frightened, institutions are stressed, and the day-to-day is itself exhausting. The results are predictable: a haphazard response, money suddenly flowing to all the wrong places, and substantial inequities where the vulnerable become only more so.

To navigate the strange territory of the past year, which included learning to collaborate with team members 5,000 miles away, keeping 10,000 students safe from COVID-19, and balancing time with our families, pets, and plants, we did what we do best: we iterated.

If you’ve had an opportunity to check out fathom.info recently, you may have noticed that we redesigned our website. Our new site better reflects our strengths as a company, highlighting projects that showcase our strong design capabilities and unique approach to data.