New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

Jaime Green, "The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination and Our Vision of the Cosmos" (Hanover Square Press, 2023)

29 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode we talk to Jaime Green about her superb cultural and scientific exploration of alien life and the cosmos. It examines how the poss...

Lawrence H. White, "Better Money: Gold, Fiat, or Bitcoin?" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

28 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The recent rise of dollar, pound, and euro inflation rates has rekindled the debate over potential alternative monies, particularly gold and Bitcoin. ...

Kenneth Mondschein, "On Time: A History of Western Timekeeping" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020)

26 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Western culture has been obsessed with regulating society by the precise, accurate measurement of time since the Middle Ages. In On Time: A History o...

Amanda Parrish Morgan, "Stroller" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

24 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Among the many things expectant parents are told to buy, none is a more visible symbol of status and parenting philosophy than a stroller. Although it...

Party

24 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sheila Liming talks about the party, social gatherings that occasion joy and dread and various emotions in between. The party is both a pause and an a...

After the Pill: A Conversation with Mary Eberstadt

23 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The pill has rocked our society to its core: but have we fully examined all its repercussions? Influential author and essayist Mary Eberstadt thinks w...

Natalie Koch, "Arid Empire: The Entangled Fates of Arizona and Arabia" (Verso, 2023)

22 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The iconic deserts of the American southwest could not have been colonized and settled without the help of desert experts from the Middle East. For ex...

Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, "We Have Always Been Cyborgs: Digital Data, Gene Technologies, and an Ethics of Transhumanism" (Bristol UP, 2023)

21 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The concept of transhumanism emerged in the middle of the 20th century, and has influenced discussions around AI, brain–computer interfaces, genetic...

James Poskett, "Horizons: The Global Origins of Modern Science" (Mariner Books, 2022)

21 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Horizons: A Global History of Science (Mariner Books, 2022), James Poskett, Associate Professor in the History of Science and Technology at the U...

Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, "Split and Splice: A Phenomenology of Experimentation" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

20 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Split & Splice: A Phenomenology of Experimentation (University of Chicago Press, 2023), Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, director emeritus at the Max Plan...

The Future of the Human Heart: A Discussion with Vincent M. Figueredo

19 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Long considered the most important of all organs, the human heart has fascinated artists and scientists alike. Listen to cardiologist Vincent Figuered...

America & Democracy Ep. 4: George Zarkadakis on Digital Liberalism

19 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Around the world, liberal democracies are in crisis. Citizens have lost faith in their government; right-wing nationalist movements frame the politica...

Meredith Broussard, "More than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech" (MIT Press, 2023)

18 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The word "glitch" implies an incidental error, as easy to patch up as it is to identify. But what if racism, sexism, and ableism aren't just bugs in m...

America & Democracy Ep. 2: Jonathan M. Berman on Anti-Vaxxers

18 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this series of interviews from The MIT Press Podcast, we'll be drawing on the research of various authors to reflect on some of the issues shaping...

Misinformed: The Covid Lab Leak Theory and the Politics of Misinformation

17 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The COVID-19 lab leak theory went from being dismissed as mere misinformation, to now a credible matter of debate amongst media, scientific, and intel...

Michelle R. Warren, "Holy Digital Grail: A Medieval Book on the Internet" (Stanford UP, 2022)

16 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Medieval books that survive today have been through a lot: singed by fire, mottled by mold, eaten by insects, annotated by readers, cut into fragments...

Sarah Atkinson and Helen W. Kennedy, "Secret Cinema and the Immersive Experience Industry" (Manchester UP, 2022)

13 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What is the future of media? In Secret Cinema and the Immersive Experience Industry (Manchester UP, 2022), Sarah Atkinson, a Professor of Screen Me...

Anne Kaun and Fredrik Stiernstedt, "Prison Media: Incarceration and the Infrastructures of Work and Technology" (MIT Press, 2023)

13 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Prisons are not typically known for cutting-edge media technologies. Yet from photography in the nineteenth century to AI-enhanced tracking cameras to...

Pharmacological Histories Ep. 1: Nancy D. Campbell on Naloxone

12 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Drawing on interviews with approximately sixty advocates, drug users, former users, friends, families, witnesses, clinicians, and scientists; Nancy D....

Mark Carrigan and Lambros Fatsis, "The Public and Their Platforms: Public Sociology in an Era of Social Media" (Bristol UP, 2021)

12 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

As social media is increasingly becoming a standard feature of sociological practice, this timely book The Public and Their Platforms: Public Sociolo...

The Politicization of Science: A Conversation with Dorian Abbot, Anna Krylov, David Romps, and Bernhardt Trout

11 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How are hiring and admissions decisions made in the hard sciences if not by merit? What are the risks of allowing science to be politicized? Professor...

Karen Schrier, "We the Gamers: How Games Teach Ethics and Civics" (Oxford UP, 2021)

11 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ethics and civics have always mattered, but perhaps they matter now more than ever before. Recently, with the rise of online teaching and movements li...

Hasok Chang, "Realism for Realistic People: A New Pragmatist Philosophy of Science (Cambridge UP, 2022)

10 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For a certain kind of standard realist, science aims at getting the absolute truth about the universe. For Hasok Chang, this view is unrealistic becau...

Michael Brown, "Emotions and Surgery in Britain, 1793-1912" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

10 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this innovative analytical account of the place of emotion and embodiment in nineteenth-century British surgery, Michael Brown examines the changin...

Henry Grabar, "Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World" (Penguin, 2023)

09 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Parking, quite literally, has a death grip on America: each year a handful of Americans are tragically killed by their fellow citizens over parking sp...

Nina Hall, "Transnational Advocacy in the Digital Era: Think Global, Act Local" (Oxford UP, 2022)

08 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Transnational Advocacy in the Digital Era (Oxford UP, 2022) explores the role of digital advocacy organizations, a major new addition to the interna...

Barbara Penner et al., "Extinct: A Compendium of Obsolete Objects" (Reaktion Books, 2021)

08 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

So-called extinct objects are those that were imagined but were never in use, or that existed but are now unused—superseded, unfashionable, or simpl...

Jason C. Cash and Craig T. Olsen, "The World of Final Fantasy VII: Essays on the Game and Its Legacy" (McFarland, 2023)

07 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Final Fantasy VII altered the course of video game history when it was released in 1997 on Sony's PlayStation system. It converted the Japanese role-p...

Sarrah Kassem, "Work and Alienation in the Platform Economy: Amazon and the Power of Organization" (Bristol UP, 2023)

06 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How have platforms transforming the world of work? In Work and Alienation in the Platform Economy: Amazon and the Power of Organisation (Bristol UP,...

Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, "Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity" (PublicAffairs, 2023)

05 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity (PublicAffairs, 2023) is a groundbreaking work by bestselling authors ...

Eva Haifa Giraud, "What Comes After Entanglement?: Activism, Anthropocentrism, and an Ethics of Exclusion" (Duke UP, 2019)

05 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

By foregrounding the ways that human existence is bound together with the lives of other entities, contemporary cultural theorists have sought to move...

Jack Buffington, "Reinventing the Supply Chain: A 21st-Century Covenant with America" (Georgetown UP, 2023)

05 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When the COVID-19 pandemic led to a global economic "shutdown" in March 2020, our supply chains began to fail, and out-of-stocks and delivery delays b...

Spatial Computing

04 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Shashi Shekhar and Pamela Vold, authors of Spatial Computing, from The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, discuss the reach, risks and importan...

Peter Frankopan, "The Earth Transformed: An Untold History" (Knopf, 2023)

04 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Earth Transformed. An Untold History (Knopf, 2023) is a captivating and informative book that reveals how climate change has been a driving forc...

Henrik Örnebring and Michael Karlsson, "Journalistic Autonomy: The Genealogy of a Concept" (U Missouri Press, 2022)

03 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Journalists around the world agree that autonomy is central to their work, but what exactly is it journalists should be autonomous from, and for what ...

Jan Recker, "Scientific Research in Information Systems: A Beginner's Guide" (Springer, 2021)

03 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Listen to this interview of Jan Recker, Professor for Information Systems and Digital Innovation at the University of Hamburg, Germany and author of ...

Extraterrestrials

02 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

An interview with Wade Roush, author of Extraterrestrials, from The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series. Are we alone in the universe? If not, wher...

Felix Flicker, "The Magick of Physics: Uncovering the Fantastical Phenomena in Everyday Life" (Simon and Schuster, 2023)

02 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

If you were to present the feats of modern science to someone from the past, those feats would surely be considered magic. In The Magick of Physics: ...

Michael W. Hankins, "Flying Camelot: The F-15, the F-16, and the Weaponization of Fighter Pilot Nostalgia" (Cornell UP, 2021)

02 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Flying Camelot: The F-15, the F-16, and the Weaponization of Fighter Pilot Nostalgia (Cornell UP, 2021) brings us back to the post-Vietnam era, when...

Collaborative Society

01 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

An interview with Dariusz Jemielniak and Aleksandra Przegalinska about Collaborative Society (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series) and how netw...

The History of Contraception

01 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

An interview with Donna J. Drucker, author of Contraception, from The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series. We discuss reproductive justice, the his...

Ian Hembrow, "Ralph Edwards: Rare Events--The Inside Story of a Worldwide Quest for Safer Medicines" (Springer, 2023)

30 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Medical treatments designed to help people can also be harmful or fatal. Around 2.5 million people die this way each year. So if any kind of medicine ...

Technologies of the Human Corpse

29 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode we hear from John Troyer, author of Technologies of the Human Corpse and the Director of The Center for Death and Society at The U...

Wendy Lynne Lee, "This is Environmental Ethics: An Introduction" (John Wiley & Sons, 2022)

28 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Wendy Lynne Lee's This is Environmental Ethics: An Introduction (John Wiley & Sons, 2022) provides students and scholars with a comprehensive introd...

Jonathan E. Abel, "The New Real: Media and Mimesis in Japan from Stereographs to Emoji" (U of Minnesota Press, 2023)

28 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Jonathan Abel’s The New Real: Media and Mimesis in Japan from Stereographs to Emoji (U of Minnesota Press, 2023) is a history of our relationships...

Computer Graphics

27 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of High Theory, Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan talks with us about computer graphics. Emerging from tools for sailing and warmaking, like...

Elaine H. Ecklund and David R. Johnson, "Varieties of Atheism in Science" (Oxford UP, 2021)

27 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Not all atheists are New Atheists, but thanks in large part to the prominence and influence of New Atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Danie...

Alan Lightman, "The Transcendent Brain: Spirituality in the Age of Science" (Pantheon, 2023)

26 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Are science and spirituality incompatible? From the acclaimed author of Einstein’s Dreams comes a rich, fascinating answer to that question... Gaz...

Paul A. Lombardo, "Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022)

25 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

“Three generations of imbeciles are enough” were the infamous words U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote in 1927. In Buck v...

Rachel Robison-Greene, "Edibility and in Vitro Meat: Ethical Considerations" (Lexington Books, 2022)

24 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Consumers and policy makers have unprecedented choices to make in the years to come about how and what we eat. If we continue down our current path of...

Quantitative Science Studies: A Discussion with Editor-in-Chief Ludo Waltman

23 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Quantitative Science Studies (QSS) is a newly launched open access journal that was born out of a collaboration between the International Society for...

John Lisle, "The Dirty Tricks Department: Stanley Lovell, the OSS, and the Masterminds of World War II Secret Warfare" (St. Martin's Press, 2023)

22 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the summer of 1942, Stanley Lovell, a renowned industrial chemist, received a mysterious order to report to an unfamiliar building in Washington, D...

Adi Kuntsman and Liu Xin, "Digital Politics, Digital Histories, Digital Futures: New Approaches for Historicising, Politicising and Imagining the Digital" (Emerald, 2023)

21 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What is digital politics? What new creative and experimental tools can we use to study digital politics historically and analyse and create future ima...

Arleen Tuchman, "Diabetes: A History of Race and Disease" (Yale UP, 2020)

21 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Arleen Marcia Tuchman’s book, Diabetes: A History of Race and Disease (Yale UP, 2020), tells the American history of a disease that continues to ...

How Attention Works: Finding Your Way in a World Full of Distraction

19 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Stefan Van der Stigchel discusses how we filter out what is irrelevant so we can focus on what we need to know. We are surrounded by a world rich with...

The Making of "Ways of Hearing"

18 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Bonus to the Ways of Hearing podcast and book A behind-the-scenes conversation with the creators of Ways of Hearing, the podcast and book. Hosted by...

Cristina Mejia Visperas, "Skin Theory: Visual Culture and the Postwar Prison Laboratory" (NYU, 2022)

14 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

An abolitionist approach to STS and the history of the life sciences: this is the model that Cristina Mejia Visperas offers in her book, Skin Theor...

Rajesh Veeraraghavan, "Patching Development: Information Politics and Social Reform in India" (Oxford UP, 2022)

11 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Rajesh Veeraraghavan’s Patching Development: Information Politics and Social Change in India (Oxford University Press, 2022) offers the first ethn...

Michelle McSweeney, "OK" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

11 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

"OK" as a word accepts proposals, describes the world as satisfactory (but not good), provides conversational momentum, or even agrees (or disagrees)....

The Cooperative Extension System

10 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of High Theory, Karl Dudman tells us about the Cooperative Extension System. Formed in 1914 as an extension of the Land Grant Universi...

Tiger C. Roholt, "Distracted from Meaning: A Philosophy of Smartphones" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

10 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Social scientists have long studied the ways in which smartphone use can distract us from the proper performance of means-ends tasks, such as driving ...

Tiago Forte, "Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential" (Atria Books, 2022)

09 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Tiago Forte about his new book Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Pote...

Johnny Walker, "Rewind, Replay: Britain and the Video Boom, 1978-92" (Edinburgh UP, 2022)

07 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Nostalgia for the 1980s is in the air. From Stranger Things to the relaunch of 80s franchises like Top Gun, the American entertainment industry cas...

Antero Garcia, "All through the Town: The School Bus as Educational Technology" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)

06 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Everyone knows the yellow school bus. It’s been invisible and also omnipresent for a century. Dr. Antero Garcia shows how the U.S. school bus, its f...

Seeing Truth in Physics

06 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Stephon Alexander talks about a better way of thinking about the interconnections between music, physics, and creativity and how as someone often seen...

Joseph Giacomelli, "Uncertain Climes: Debating Climate Change in Gilded Age America" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

05 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Even people who still refuse to accept the reality of human-induced climate change would have to agree that the topic has become inescapable in the Un...

Ben Shneiderman, "Human-Centered AI" (Oxford UP, 2022)

04 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The remarkable progress in algorithms for machine and deep learning have opened the doors to new opportunities, and some dark possibilities. However, ...

Has Peer Review Hit a Point of No Return?

04 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Vivian Berghahn joins to discuss what is broken with the peer review system in general, how it impacts book publishing, and some creative solutions f...

Rhea Myers, "Proof of Work: Blockchain Provocations 2011-2021" (MIT Press, 2023)

03 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

NFT, BTC, DAO, ETH, WAGMI, HODL. It would have been hard to avoid these acronyms only a year ago. The hype around cryptocurrencies and blockchain art ...

Control Through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management

03 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

JoAnne Yates, Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management, Emerita and Professor of Managerial Communication and Work and Organization Studies at MIT’...

Alexa Hagerty, "Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains" (Crown, 2023)

02 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains (Crown, 2023), anthropologist Alexa Hagerty learns to see the dead body with a foren...

Karen Frost-Arnold, "Who Should We Be Online?: A Social Epistemology for the Internet" (Oxford UP, 2023)

01 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Internet plays a central role in how we communicate, share information, disseminate ideas, maintain social connections, and conduct business. The ...

Julia H. Lee, "The Racial Railroad" (NYU Press, 2022)

01 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Despite the seeming supremacy of car culture in the United States, the train has long been and continues to be a potent symbol of American exceptional...

Susan R. Grayzel, "The Age of the Gas Mask: How British Civilians Faced the Terrors of Total War" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

01 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On this episode, we sit down with Dr. Susan R. Grayzel, Professor of History at Utah State University to discuss The Age of the Gas Mask: How British...

Elizabeth M. Renieris, "Beyond Data: Reclaiming Human Rights at the Dawn of the Metaverse" (MIT Press, 2023)

31 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Why laws focused on data cannot effectively protect people—and how an approach centered on human rights offers the best hope for preserving human di...

Life Extension Therapies

29 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The story of the Fountain of Youth is as old as history itself. Herodotus, the father of ancient Greek history, wrote of a mythical spring that extend...

Jeffrey G. Snodgrass, "The Avatar Faculty: Ecstatic Transformations in Religion and Video Games" (U California Press, 2023)

28 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Avatar Faculty: Ecstatic Transformations in Religion and Video Games (University of California Press, 2023) creatively examines the parallels be...

Woodrow Hartzog, "Privacy's Blueprint: The Battle to Control the Design of New Technologies" (Harvard UP, 2018)

28 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Every day, Internet users interact with technologies designed to undermine their privacy. Social media apps, surveillance technologies, and the Intern...

Wake Smith, "Pandora's Toolbox: The Hopes and Hazards of Climate Intervention" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

28 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Reaching net zero emissions will not be the end of the climate struggle, but only the end of the beginning. For centuries thereafter, temperatures wil...

The Science of Security

27 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Listen to this interview of Cormac Herley, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research. We talk about the science of security and as well, about the c...

Winning & Losing in the Emerging EV Wars/The Aftershocks of the EV Transition Could Be Ugly

27 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Robert Charette, engineer, consultant, and contributing editor at IEEE Spectrum magazine, talks about his twelve-part series, “The Electric Vehicl...

Felix Zimmermann, "Virtual Realities: Atmospheric Experience of the Past in Digital Games (Büchner-Verlag, 2023)

26 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Felix Zimmermann about his book Virtual Realities: Atmospheric Experience of the Past in Digital Games (Virtuelle Wirklichkeiten: ...

Reinhold Martin, "Knowledge Worlds: Media, Materiality, and the Making of the Modern University" (Columbia UP, 2021)

25 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What do the technical practices, procedures, and systems that have shaped institutions of higher learning in the United States, from the Ivy League an...

David J. Halperin, "Intimate Alien: The Hidden Story of the UFO" (Stanford UP, 2020)

24 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In his book Intimate Alien: The Hidden Story of the UFO (Stanford University Press, 2020), David J. Halperin explores the phenomena of UFO's throug...

Dominique A. Tobbell, "Dr. Nurse: Science, Politics, and the Transformation of American Nursing" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

24 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

An analysis of the efforts of American nurses to establish nursing as an academic discipline and nurses as valued researchers in the decades after Wor...

Gordon Barrett, "China’s Cold War Science Diplomacy" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

23 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

During the early decades of the Cold War, the People’s Republic of China remained far outside mainstream international science — right?  Gordon B...

Alvin Hall, "Driving the Green Book: A Road Trip Through the Living History of Black Resistance" (HarperOne, 2023)

21 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For countless Americans, the open road has long been a place where dangers lurk. In the era of Jim Crow, Black travelers encountered locked doors, hos...

Left to Our Own Devices: A Conversation with Julia Ticona

20 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past three decades, digital technologies like smartphones and laptops have transformed the way we work in the US. At the same time, workers a...

The Challenge of AI to Publishing: A Discussion with Sally Wilson

18 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sally Wilson, VP of Publishing at Emerald opens up about the challenges publishers are facing in contending with the onset of the mass adoption of AI ...

John Miller, "The Philosophy of Tattoos" (British Library, 2021)

17 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Philosophy of Tattoos (British Library, 2021) by Dr. John Miller presents an impressively broad yet personal account, exploring tattooing as a un...

Bleddyn E. Bowen, "Original Sin: Power, Technology and War in Outer Space" (Oxford UP, 2022)

17 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Space technology was developed to enhance the killing power of the state. The Moon landings and the launch of the Space Shuttle were mere sideshows, d...

Eric Porter, "A People's History of SFO: The Making of the Bay Area and an Airport" (U California Press, 2023)

16 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What can an airport tell us about a city? Quite a bit, according to UC-Santa Cruz history professor Eric Porter in A People's History of SFO: The M...

Computer Music and Human Computer Interaction

15 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Michael Gurevich, lecturer at the Sonic Arts Research Centre at the Queen’s University, Belfast School of Music and Sonic Arts, serves as guest edit...

Illuminations Episode 3: Divine Technology

14 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It’s common to feel that technology removes the magic of the world, but Hindu worshippers in Bangalore have shown that it's all in the approach.  G...

Traveling Black, A Story of Race and Resistance: A Conversation with Mia Bay

13 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Mia Bay, the Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Chair in American History at the University of Pennsylvania, talks about her book Traveling Black: A Sto...

Illuminations Episode 2: Beyond Belief

13 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Do scientists ever reject science? Research data on the controversial topic of extraterrestrial life has met with resistance from some in the scientif...

Toby Green and Thomas Fazi, "The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left" (Hurst, 2023)

12 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

During the first months of the pandemic, governments worldwide agreed that ‘following the science’ with hard lockdowns and vaccine mandates was th...

Jessa Lingel, "The Gentrification of the Internet: How to Reclaim Our Digital Freedom" (U California Press, 2023)

12 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The internet has become a battleground. Although it was unlikely to live up to the hype and hopes of the 1990s, only the most skeptical cynics could h...

James W. Cortada, "Birth of Modern Facts: How the Information Revolution Transformed Academic Research, Governments and Businesses" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)

12 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For over twenty years, James W. Cortada has pioneered research into how information shapes society. In Birth of Modern Facts: How the Information Rev...

Publishing Science: A Discussion with Tiffany Gasbarrini, Senior Science Editor, Johns Hopkins University Press

11 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

"It is not only for science to give to publishing, but the time has come for publishing to start giving back to science." Tiffany Gasbarrini clarif...