About Concrete

Concrete is a newsletter project by me, Matthew Burton. I've been an intelligence analyst, a government technology leader, and an advocate for greater public participation in government administration.

In this newsletter/blog/whatever, I write about systems that have a big impact on American public life, but are too boring or arcane to get lots of notice from traditional press. I chose the name "Concrete" because concrete is ubiquitous, vital, and something that most people would rather not think about. They just want it to work. Our world is filled with systems that are just like that.

I define "systems" broadly: sometimes it's computer systems, but road networks and housing policy are in bounds too. My goal is to go deep into one problem in order to expose an aspect of it that usually gets little notice, and make it interesting enough to readers to make them want to take action.  

Some of the things I write here have a lot of overlap with what I'm currently working on professionally. My words shouldn't be construed as anything but my own opinion.

Everything I write here is free, and I have no plans to change that, unless I get a bunch of subscribers and my hosting fee balloons. You don't have to log in to read. If you want to get an email when I write something new, you can subscribe. I don't use any traffic analysis or click tracking. The content here is also available as an RSS feed.