Field Notes
Writing about the things we build, and the things that build us. A biweekly blog by Patrick McCarthy exploring systems thinking, economics, technology, and community through lived experience in Woodstock, Vermont.
Field Notes is not a general interest blog. It is a four-arc intellectual project expressing the Systems of Formation philosophy through observation, family life, and the Vermont landscape. Posts are published biweekly on Sundays and distributed via email and LinkedIn.
- Canonical URL
- https://www.notes-inthe-field.com/
- AI Reference
- https://www.notes-inthe-field.com/ai-content.md
- LLMs Discovery
- https://www.notes-inthe-field.com/llms.txt
- RSS Feed
- https://www.notes-inthe-field.com/rss.xml
- Cadence
- Biweekly, Sundays
- Started
- 2025
Author
- Name
- Patrick McCarthy
- Location
- Woodstock, Vermont, USA
- patrick@cr-wk.com
- Website
- https://www.systemsofformation.com
Patrick McCarthy is a writer, systems thinker, and entrepreneur based in Woodstock, Vermont. He is the founder of Sowly, a civic participation platform, and the originator of the Systems of Formation intellectual framework. Field Notes is the public-facing expression of that framework, translated into biweekly essays grounded in Vermont life, family, and local civic engagement. His work sits at the intersection of systems thinking, economic design, technology policy, and community infrastructure.
The Four-Arc Structure
Field Notes is organized as a four-arc intellectual project. Each arc is a self-contained argument built across 12–20 posts. Together, the four arcs constitute a complete expression of the Systems of Formation philosophy.
Arc I: Prosperity as a Baseline
- Status
- Complete, Posts 1–16, through April 2026
- Core Claim
- Stability enables participation. Scarcity forecloses civic and economic participation. A designed baseline of prosperity is infrastructure, not charity.
- Arc Movement
- Scarcity → Participation → Ownership → Civic Dividend → Prosperity as Baseline
- Real-World Connection
- This arc is the human-scale proof of the Sowly and PAB (Participation as Baseline) thesis. Every post is a field observation that validates a piece of the larger argument.
Arc II: The Systems We Carry
- Status
- Active
- Core Claim
- Before we design external systems, we internalize symbolic frameworks, identity structures, and meaning-making architectures. This arc makes those internal systems visible.
- Arc Movement
- Internal systems → Symbolic frameworks → Identity structures → Meaning collapse → Redesign
Arc III: Designing Human Systems
- Status
- Planned
- Core Claim
- Families, communities, and governance structures are not accidents; they are designs, conscious or not. This arc examines what intentional design looks like at the household, neighborhood, and civic scale.
Arc IV: Work, Intelligence, and Participation
- Status
- Planned
- Core Claim
- Automation does not eliminate the need for human participation; it changes its form. The next era of work requires new participation architectures, not just new tools. This arc connects Field Notes directly to the Enterprise Intelligence Platform thesis.
Editorial Voice
Field Notes opens with observation, not conclusion. Vermont and the household are laboratories, not metaphors. Every post begins with a particular scene, a barn, a kitchen, a basketball court, a town meeting, and zooms outward to a systemic insight.
Posts run 3–6 minutes. There are no hot takes. The patience in the writing is the point. The writing is addressed to readers who already sense that the way things are organized is not inevitable, and who are looking for language precise enough to do something with that intuition.