Mario Noioso
Covers:
data, databases, artificial intelligence, public sector technology, software architecture, digital sovereignty, cloud computing, technology culture.
Interview
Have you ever used a typewriter?
Yes, and a Commodore 64 right after it, which is where the trouble started. I still keep vintage machines around, and I wrote about the C64 Ultimate for that reason: a system you can understand down to the last gate is a rare thing today, and it is the standard I hold modern platforms to.
How is social media changing news?
It moved the archive out of the newsroom and into platforms that can edit, rank or delete it without telling anyone. The feed is not the problem; the ownership of the record is. The next turn is already here: AI answers that summarize the news without a byline. Whoever controls what those systems are allowed to remember controls the story, which is why I write about memory as infrastructure rather than as a feature.
Who's your favorite fictional journalist?
Winston Smith, in 1984. Technically a journalist: he rewrites yesterday’s newspapers so that the archive always agrees with today. He is the reason I wrote a book on who owns memory, and the best job description I know for what a document platform must never do.
What does it mean to be a journalist?
To keep a record that the people in power did not get to edit. Everything else, the style, the scoop, the platform, is downstream of that. In my field it also means refusing the demo: a system is what it does at three in the morning under load, with an auditor on the phone, not what it does on a slide.
What's the funniest news-related #hashtag you've seen?
SovereignCloud. Not because it is funny in itself, but because for about three years every vendor in Europe used it to describe the exact opposite of what their contract said. The hashtag was doing more sovereignty than the infrastructure.
How do you prefer to be pitched on stories?
By email, short and specific. I write about data platforms, AI infrastructure and public sector technology, mostly in Europe, and I am interested in stories where a system has to survive production: sovereignty and regulation, records and document platforms, AI agents and the data they are allowed to remember. Tell me what is new, who is accountable, and whether an architect or an engineer is available to talk; I do not cover product launches as such. I am also available to be interviewed on these topics and on my books. Contact details are on marionoioso.com/profile/
What tools and software do you use to do your job?
A self-hosted WordPress on my own domain, with structured data I maintain by hand; Google Docs for drafts; MongoDB, because the examples in my guides have to run, not just read well; a vintage amplifier for thinking. And Zenodo for every field guide, so each one has a DOI and a copy that does not depend on me or on any platform.
Who do you wish followed you?
The records managers and archivists of Europe’s public administrations. They are the people who actually decide what a country will be able to remember in fifty years, nobody follows them, and most of what I write is for them.
Why did you become a journalist?
I did not, strictly. I spent thirty years building the systems that remember on behalf of banks, governments and institutions, at IBM, Microsoft, ServiceNow and now MongoDB, and at some point the professional question became a public one: who owns these memories, and what exactly do they own. Writing was the only honest way to answer it. So I write as a practitioner, about what fails in production and why, for Towards Data Science, Agenda Digitale and my own site, and I publish free field guides for the people who have to build these platforms.
What advice can you offer to aspiring journalists?
Learn how the systems work before you write about what they do. Read the patent, the tender, the architecture diagram, the retention schedule; ask for the data model, not the press kit. And own your archive: publish on your own domain first, syndicate second, so that twenty years from now your work is still where you left it.
When's the best time to pitch you?
Any time, by email; I read in the evening, Rome time, and reply within a few days. The best time is before the launch, not after: if the story is about a system that is going into production, I would rather talk to the architect while the decisions are still being made.
What's the best pitch you ever got?
Not an email: an archivist who, after a talk, told me that the system I had just praised could not say when a document had been destroyed, or under which rule. That one sentence became a chapter in my second field guide. The best pitches are from the people who operate the thing, and they rarely call them pitches.
What's your favorite drink?
Espresso, standing at the bar, in Rome. It is the only data pipeline in the city with a guaranteed latency.
When you're not at a computer, where are you most likely to be?
On my terrace in Rome, with two dogs and a vintage amplifier doing most of the talking. Vinyl or high-resolution streaming, I stopped arguing about which: when the system gets out of the way they converge.
Aside from your own, what's your favorite publication to read?
Wired, for thirty years, and still the standard I hold my own pages to: technology written as culture, not as product news. For the work itself, the European public sector trade press, Agenda Digitale in Italy above all, because that is where the decisions I write about are actually reported.
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