New Books in Science, Technology, and Society
Episodes
Shelley Fraser Mickle, "Borrowing Life: How Scientists, Surgeons, and a War Hero Made the First Successful Organ Transplant a Reality" (Imagine, 2020)
17 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Performed at Boston's Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in 1954, the first successful kidney transplant was the culmination of years of grit, compassion, an...
Michael Weeks, "Cattle Beet Capital: Making Industrial Agriculture in Northern Colorado" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)
17 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1870 several hundred settlers arrived at a patch of land at the confluence of the South Platte and Cache la Poudre Rivers in Colorado Territory. Th...
Matthew Hall et al., "Digital Gender-Sexual Violations: Violence, Technologies, Motivations" (Routledge, 2022)
16 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This groundbreaking book argues that the fundamental issues around how victim-survivors of digital gender-sexual violations (DGSVs) are abused can be ...
Karen Levy, "Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance" (Princeton UP, 2022)
15 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Long-haul truckers are the backbone of the American economy, transporting goods under grueling conditions and immense economic pressure. Truckers have...
Samuel J. Redman, "Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums" (Harvard UP, 2022)
15 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums (Harvard University Press, 2022 for paperback edition), Samuel J. Redman, Assoc...
Seeing Truth in Variability, Creativity, and Building Biological Collections
15 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, scientists speak back to ideas about collection building, knowledge making, and the role of art and creativity in research. Bernard ...
Yasmine Ali, "Walk Through Fire: The Train Disaster That Changed America" (Citadel Press, 2023)
14 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The first book to examine the rarely-acknowledged Waverly Train Disaster of 1978 - the catastrophic accident that changed America forever and led to t...
Scott Moore, "China's Next Act: How Sustainability and Technology Are Reshaping China's Rise and the World's Future" (Oxford UP, 2022)
13 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
If the COVID-19 pandemic taught us anything, it is that the world is bound together by shared challenges—and that at the center of those challenges ...
Jacalyn Duffin, "Covid-19: A History" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022)
12 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For two years the COVID-19 pandemic has upended the world. The physician and medical historian Jacalyn Duffin presents a global history of the virus, ...
Barbara Katz Rothman, "The Biomedical Empire: Lessons Learned from the COVID Pandemic" (Stanford UP, 2021)
11 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We are all citizens of the Biomedical Empire, though few of us know it, and even fewer understand the extent of its power. In this book, Barbara Kat...
Matthew Thaler, "No Other Planet: Utopian Visions for a Climate-changed World" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
10 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Visions of utopia – some hopeful, others fearful – have become increasingly prevalent in recent times. In No Other Planet: Utopian Visions for a ...
Nancy J. Nersessian, "Interdisciplinarity in the Making: Models and Methods in Frontier Science" (MIT Press, 2022)
10 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Based on examining physics and the practices of physicists, philosophers of science often see models in science as representational intermediaries bet...
The Future of AI in Work: A Discussion with Daniel Susskind
09 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What exactly can artificial intelligence do? It’s an issue some of the professions are grappling with – on the face of it, law is an area that res...
Julia Ticona, "Left to Our Own Devices: Coping with Insecure Work in a Digital Age" (Oxford UP, 2022)
09 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Hello, world! This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series. In this episode, our host Florence Madenga discusses the book Left to Our Own ...
Autumn Womack, "The Matter of Black Living: The Aesthetic Experiment of Racial Data, 1880–1930" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
08 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Autumn Womack is a professor of English and of African American Studies at Princeton University. Her new book, The Matter of Black Living: The Aesthe...
Dan Bouk, "Democracy's Data: The Hidden Stories in the U.S. Census and How to Read Them" (MCD, 2022)
08 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dan Bouk is a writer, professor, and cultural historian of quantification, or as Bouk puts it, the history all fascinating things “shrouded in the c...
James A. Geraghty, "Inside the Orphan Drug Revolution: The Promise of Patient-Centered Biotechnology" (Cold Springs Harbor Lab Press, 2022)
06 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Advances in medicine have made possible better treatments for widespread, familiar human illnesses like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. Yet there...
Melissa Kagen, "Wandering Games" (MIT Press, 2022)
04 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Wandering Games (MIT Press, 2022), Melissa Kagen analyzes wandering within different game worlds, viewed through the lenses of work, colonialism...
Huw J. Davies, "The Wandering Army: The Campaigns That Transformed the British Way of War" (Yale UP, 2022)
01 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The Wandering Army: The Campaigns that Transformed the British Way of War (Yale University Press, 2022), Dr. Huw J. Davies presents a compelling ...
94 Elizabeth Kolbert on the Nature of the Future (GT, JP, NS, HY)
01 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How should humans respond to our ongoing human-made climate catastrophe? To answer that question, Recall this Book turned to prize-winning climate r...
Jonathan R. Hunt, "The Nuclear Club: How America and the World Policed the Atom from Hiroshima to Vietnam" (Stanford UP, 2022)
01 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Nuclear Club: How America and the World Policed the Atom from Hiroshima to Vietnam (Stanford UP, 2022) reveals how a coalition of powerful and d...
Sofya Glazunova, "Digital Activism in Russia: The Communication Tactics of Political Outsiders" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)
30 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Digital Activism in Russia: The Communication Tactics of Political Outsiders (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022) examines various forms of Russian online ant...
Paul Belleflamme and Martin Peitz, "The Economics of Platforms: Concepts and Strategy" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
30 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Digital platforms controlled by Alibaba, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, Tencent and Uber have transformed not only the ways we do business, but ...
Michael Bess, "Planet in Peril: Humanity's Four Greatest Challenges and How We Can Overcome Them" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
29 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Michael Bess is the Chancellor's Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. His fifth and most recent book is Planet in Peril: Humanity’s Four...
Sarah Abel, "Permanent Markers: Race, Ancestry, and the Body After the Genome" (UNC Press, 2021)
29 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past twenty years, DNA ancestry testing has morphed from a niche market into a booming international industry that encourages members of the ...
Tim Walker and Lucian Morris, "The Handbook of Banking Technology" (John Wiley & Sons, 2021)
28 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The Handbook of Banking Technology (John Wiley & Sons, 2021), Walker and Morris provide a first comprehensive view of the systems that support a...
Joseph Silk, "Back to the Moon: The Next Giant Leap for Humankind" (Princeton UP, 2022)
28 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Just over half a century since Neil Armstrong first stepped foot on the lunar surface, a new space race to the Moon is well underway and rapidly gaini...
Christopher Willoughby, "Masters of Health: Racial Science and Slavery in US Medical Schools" (UNC Press, 2022)
24 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Medical science in antebellum America was organized around a paradox: it presumed African Americans to be less than human yet still human enough to be...
Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow, "Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back" (Beacon Press, 2022)
23 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Corporate concentration has breached the stratosphere, as have corporate profits. An ever-expanding constellation of industries are now monopolies (wh...
Ann-Christine Duhaime, "Minding the Climate: How Neuroscience Can Help Solve Our Environmental Crisis" (Harvard UP, 2022)
22 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Why is it so difficult to adopt a more sustainable way of life, even when convinced of the urgency of the environmental crisis? If adopting new behavi...
Aynne Kokas, "Trafficking Data: How China Is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty" (Oxford UP, 2022)
22 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On August 6, 2020, the Trump Administration issued a ban on TikTok in the United States, requiring that the owner, Beijing-based Bytedance, sell the c...
Probability
22 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of High Theory, Justin Joque talks with Júlia Irion Martins about Probability. This conversation is part of our High Theory in STEM s...
Anna Pendergrast and Kelly Pendergrast, "More Zeros and Ones: Digital Technology, Maintenance and Equity in Aotearoa New Zealand" (Bridget Williams Books, 2022)
21 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Many of today’s digital technologies inadvertently amplify the power structures and prejudices of wider society. By examining the way digital tools ...
Robert P. Crease with Peter D. Bond, "The Leak: Politics, Activists, and Loss of Trust at Brookhaven National Laboratory" (MIT Press, 2022)
18 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1997, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory found a small leak of radioactive water near their research reactor. Brookhaven was--and is--a w...
Plumbing the Depths of Wikipedia: A Conversation with Annie Rauwerda
17 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 2020, during the nadir of the pandemic, Annie Rauwerda began posting strange, humorous, and obscure Wikipedia entries on social media. She dubbed h...
Anita Guerrini, "Experimenting with Humans and Animals: From Aristotle to CRISPR" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022)
16 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Experimentation on animals—particularly humans—is often assumed to be a uniquely modern phenomenon. But the ideas and attitudes that encourage bio...
Adam Laats, "Creationism USA: Bridging the Impasse on Teaching Evolution" (Oxford UP, 2020)
16 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Who are America's creationists? What do they want? Why do they think Jesus rode around on a dinosaur? In Creationism USA: Bridging the Impasse on Tea...
The Future of Data Control: A Discussion with Sarah Lamdan
15 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A few big companies are selling information about us to governments and companies. But beyond a general sense of unease, what do we need to know about...
Janaki Srinivasan, "The Political Lives of Information: Information and the Production of Development in India" (MIT Press, 2022)
15 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Political Lives of Information: Information and the Production of Development in India (MIT Press, 2022), written by Janaki Srinivasan and publi...
Matthew Crain, "Profit over Privacy: How Surveillance Advertising Conquered the Internet" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
15 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The contemporary internet's de facto business model is one of surveillance. Browser cookies follow us around the web, Amazon targets us with eerily pr...
On H. G. Well's "The Time Machine"
15 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When H.G. Wells was growing up in England in the 1860s, science wasn’t part of education or everyday life the way it is now. Even though the 19th ce...
Ernest M. Valea, "Artificial Intelligence, Reincarnation, and Resurrection: An Inquiry Into the Ultimate Fulfillment of Human Nature" (Resource Publications, 2021)
14 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ernest M. Valea's Artificial Intelligence, Reincarnation, and Resurrection: An Inquiry Into the Ultimate Fulfillment of Human Nature (Resource Publi...
Earvin Charles B. Cabalquinto, "(Im)mobile Homes: Family Life at a Distance in the Age of Mobile Media" (Oxford UP, 2022)
14 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How do transnational Filipino families remain connected through mobile media technologies? In (Im)mobile Homes: Family Life at a Distance in the Age ...
Sofi Thanhauser, "Worn: A People's History of Clothing" (Vintage, 2022)
11 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Worn: A People's History of Clothing (Vintage, 2022) by Sofi Thanhauser explores linen, cotton, silk, synthetics, wool: through the stories of these ...
Karen Bakker, "The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants" (Princeton UP, 2022)
11 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The natural world teems with remarkable conversations, many beyond human hearing range. Scientists are using groundbreaking digital technologies to un...
Sarah E. Wagner, "What Remains: Bringing America's Missing Home from the Vietnam War" (Harvard UP, 2019)
10 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For many families the Vietnam War remains unsettled. Nearly 1,600 Americans— and more than 300,000 Vietnamese—involved in the conflict are still u...
Emily J. H. Contois and Zenia Kish, "Food Instagram: Identity, Influence, and Negotiation" (U Illinois Press, 2022)
10 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Image by image and hashtag by hashtag, Instagram has redefined the ways we relate to food. Emily J. H. Contois and Zenia Kish’s edited book Food In...
Andrew Fiss, "Performing Math: A History of Communication and Anxiety in the American Mathematics Classroom" (Rutgers UP, 2020)
09 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Performing Math: A History of Communication and Anxiety in the American Mathematics Classroom (Rutgers University Press, 2020) by Dr. Andrew Fiss tel...
Veronica Kirin, "Stories of Elders: What the Greatest Generation Knows about Technology that You Don't" (2018)
09 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
America’s Greatest Generation (born before 1945) witnessed incredible changes in technology and social progress. From simple improvements in enterta...
The Future of Rules: A Discussion with Lorraine Daston
08 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Which rules do we obey and which ones can we find a way around? What distinctions can be drawn between rules, models to be emulated and algorithms. Lo...
Timothy W. Burns, "Leo Strauss on Democracy, Technology, and Liberal Education" (SUNY Press, 2021)
03 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
There are few thinkers who engender as much debate about their legacy as Leo Strauss (1899 –1973). His critics and biographers often don’t even ag...
Gerd Gigerenzer, "How to Stay Smart in a Smart World: Why Human Intelligence Still Beats Algorithms" (MIT Press, 2022)
03 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Doomsday prophets of technology predict that robots will take over the world, leaving humans behind in the dust. Tech industry boosters think replacin...
David Kaiser, "Well, Doc, You're In: Freeman Dyson’s Journey through the Universe" (MIT Press, 2022)
02 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Freeman Dyson (1923–2020)—renowned scientist, visionary, and iconoclast—helped invent modern physics. Not bound by disciplinary divisions, he we...
Brian A. Wong, "The Tao of Alibaba: Inside the Chinese Digital Giant That Is Changing the World" (PublicAffairs, 2022)
01 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This podcast features Brian A. Wong, discussing his new book, The Tao of Alibaba: Inside the Chinese Digital Giant That is Changing the World (Publ...
Chris Salter, "Sensing Machines: How Sensors Shape Our Everyday Life" (MIT Press, 2022)
01 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sensing machines are everywhere in our world. As we move through the day, electronic sensors and computers adjust our thermostats, guide our Roombas, ...
Ashley Sweetman, "Cyber and the City: Securing London’s Banks in the Computer Age" (Springer, 2022)
01 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Ashley Sweetman works in cyber security for a London-based global bank and holds a PhD from the Department of War Studies at King’s College Lon...
Emily Weinstein and Carrie James, "Behind Their Screens: What Teens Are Facing (and Adults Are Missing)" (MIT Press, 2022)
31 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What are teens actually doing on their smartphones? Contrary to many adults' assumptions, they are not simply "addicted" to their screens, oblivious t...
Darts Transit Commission: Silicon Valley’s Car Culture
31 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Paris Marx is one of the sharpest modern writers on Silicon Valley and transit. We have been talking a lot lately about the idea of techno-utopian thi...
Sian E. Harding, "The Exquisite Machine: The New Science of the Heart" (MIT Press, 2022)
31 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Your heart is a miracle in motion, a marvel of construction unsurpassed by any human-made creation. It beats 100,000 times every day--if you were to l...
Daniel D. Garcia-Swartz and Martin Campbell-Kelly, "Cellular: An Economic and Business History of the International Mobile-Phone Industry" (MIT Press, 2022)
28 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we discuss a book that will be appealing to a general audience and which helps to bridge the gap of the story of communication in the...
Krystale E. Littlejohn, "Just Get on the Pill: The Uneven Burden of Reproductive Politics" (U California Press, 2021)
27 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The average person concerned about becoming pregnant spends approximately thirty years trying to prevent conception. People largely do so alone using ...
Andrei Nae, "Immersion, Narrative, and Gender Crisis in Survival Horror Video Games" (Routledge, 2021)
26 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Andrei Nae's book Immersion, Narrative, and Gender Crisis in Survival Horror Video Games (Routledge, 2021) investigates the narrativity of some of t...
Adrian Hon, "You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All" (Basic Books, 2022)Adrian Hon, "You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All" (Basic Books, 2022)
25 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Warehouse workers pack boxes while a virtual dragon races across their screen. If they beat their colleagues, they get an award. If not, they can be f...
On Social Media and Hinduism
25 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dheepa Sundaram (she/her/hers) is scholar of performance, ritual, yoga, and digital culture in South Asia at the University of Denver which sits on th...
Gwen Shuni D'Arcangelis, "Bio-Imperialism: Disease, Terror, and the Construction of National Fragility" (Rutgers UP, 2020)
21 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Gwen Shuni D'Arcangelis's book Bio-Imperialism: Disease, Terror, and the Construction of National Fragility (Rutgers UP, 2020) focuses on an unders...
Seeing Truth in Data
20 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun sees value in the truth, but worries what data we might be looking at to find it. Chun discusses her new book, Discriminating Da...
Paul Daugherty and H. James Wilson, "Radically Human: How New Technology Is Transforming Business and Shaping Our Future" (HBR Press, 2022)
20 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Jim Wilson about his book (co-authored with Paul Daugherty) Radically Human: How New Technology Is Transforming Business and Shapi...
Lisa Feldman Barrett, "Seven and a Half Lessons about the Brain" (Mariner Books, 2020)
19 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Have you ever wondered why you have a brain? Let renowned neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett demystify that big gray blob between your ears. In Seve...
Josh Bowsher, "The Informational Logic of Human Rights" (Edinburgh UP, 2022)
19 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What happens to the cultural politics of human rights when atrocities are rendered calculable, abuses are transformed into data, and victims become ve...
Orli Fridman, "Memory Activism and Digital Practices After Conflict: Unwanted Memories" (Amsterdam UP, 2022)
19 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
With Memory Activism and Digital Practices after Conflict: Unwanted Memories (Amsterdam UP, 2022), Orli Fridman traces the emergence of memory acti...
Technocracy Now! Part 3: Technocracy in the Private Sector
19 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The first two episodes of this series told stories of technocrats who tied themselves to a muscular state. They believed the state could remake societ...
Asim Sajjad Akhter, "The Struggle for Hegemony in Pakistan: Fear, Desire and Revolutionary Horizons" (Pluto Press, 2022)
18 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The collapse of neoliberal hegemony in the western world following the financial crash of 2007-8 and subsequent rise of right-wing authoritarian perso...
Robert P. Crease, "The Leak: Politics, Activists, and Loss of Trust at Brookhaven National Laboratory" (MIT Press, 2022)
18 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1997, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory found a small leak of radioactive water near their research reactor. Brookhaven was--and is--a w...
Lilie Chouliaraki and Myria Georgiou, "The Digital Border: Migration, Technology, Power" (NYU Press, 2022)
17 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How do digital technologies shape the experiences and meanings of migration? As the numbers of people fleeing war, poverty, and environmental disaster...
Leslie A. Geddes, "Watermarks: Leonardo Da Vinci and the Mastery of Nature" (Princeton UP, 2020)
17 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Formless, mutable, transparent: the element of water posed major challenges for the visual artists of the Renaissance. To the engineers of the era, wa...
Geert Lovink, "Stuck on the Platform: Reclaiming the Internet" (Valiz, 2022)
13 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We’re all trapped. No matter how hard you try to delete apps from your phone, the power of seduction draws you back. Doom scrolling is the new norma...
Scott Moore, "China's Next Act: How Sustainability and Technology Are Reshaping China's Rise and the World's Future" (Oxford UP, 2022)
13 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
“We’ll compete with confidence; we’ll cooperate wherever we can; we’ll contest where we must.” That’s the new China strategy as outlined b...
Suzana Sawyer, "The Small Matter of Suing Chevron" (Duke UP, 2022)
12 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 2011, an Ecuadorian court issued the world’s largest environmental contamination liability: a $9.5 billion judgment against Chevron. Within years...
Christopher Lukman, "Control Machines: Toward a Dispositive Theory of Computer Games" (Lit Verlag, 2022)
11 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Christopher Lukman about his new book Control Machines: Toward a Dispositive Theory of Computer Games (Lit Verlag, 2022). In light...
Technocracy Now! Part 2: Exploring Technocracy through Cybernetics
10 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On part #2 of Technocracy Now, we tell stories of cybernetic technocracies. First, we hear the story of Charles A. McClelland, a liberal political sci...
Virtual Reality as Immersive Enclosure, with Paul Roquet (EF, JP)
06 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Paul Roquet is an MIT associate professor in media studies and Japan studies; his earlier work includes Ambient Media. It was his recent mind-bendin...
Elizabeth Ellcessor, "In Case of Emergency: How Technologies Mediate Crisis and Normalize Inequality" (NYU Press, 2022)
05 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Elizabeth Ellcessor presents a much-needed look at the growth of emergency media and its impact on our lives in In Case of Emergency: How Technol...
Technocracy Now! Part 1: Noam Chomsky on Intellectuals and Expertise
03 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Technocracy is the idea that experts should govern. For the common good, presumably. In fact, it's an idea as old as politics itself, and it emerges j...
Social Media and Political Participation in the Philippines
29 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We are all familiar with the spread of disinformation on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. But just when we thought we’...
Alex Williams and Jeremy Gilbert, "Hegemony Now: How Big Tech and Wall Street Won the World (And How We Win it Back)" (Verso, 2022)
29 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today power is in the hands of Wall Street and Silicon Valley. How do we understand this transformation in power? And what can we do about it? We cann...
James Bessen, "The New Goliaths: How Corporations Use Software to Dominate Industries, Kill Innovation, and Undermine Regulation" (Yale UP, 2022)
29 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The New Goliaths: How Corporations Use Software to Dominate Industries, Kill Innovation, and Undermine Regulation (Yale UP, 2022), James Bessen e...
Tripp Mickle, "After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul" (William Morrow, 2022))
28 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Steve Jobs called Jony Ive his "spiritual partner at Apple." The London-born genius was the second-most powerful person at Apple and the creative forc...
Digital Lethargy
27 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of High Theory, Tung-Hui Hu talks with Júlia Irion Martins about Digital Lethargy, as part of our High Theory in STEM series. As a mo...
Kathryn Harkup, "Death By Shakespeare: Snakebites, Stabbings and Broken Hearts" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
26 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
William Shakespeare found dozens of different ways to kill off his characters, and audiences today still enjoy the same reactions – shock, sadness, ...
Kirsti Niskanen and Michael J. Barany, "Gender, Embodiment, and the History of the Scholarly Persona" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)
26 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Gender, Embodiment, and the History of the Scholarly Persona. Incarnations and Contestations (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), Professors Kirsti Niska...
NBN Classic: Phoebe Moore, "The Quantified Self in Precarity: Work, Technology and What Counts" (Routledge, 2017)
25 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time. Humans are accustomed to being...
NBN Classic: Mark Bartholomew, "Adcreep: The Case Against Modern Marketing" (Stanford Law Books, 2017)
25 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time. Advertising is everywhere. By ...
NBN Classic: Jonathan Sadowsky, "The Empire of Depression: A New History" (Polity, 2020)
24 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time. When is sorrow sickness? That ...
NBN Classic: Virginia Eubanks, "Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor" (St. Martin's, 2018)
24 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time. The State of Indiana denies on...
James Belich, "The World the Plague Made: The Black Death and the Rise of Europe" (Princeton UP, 2022)
23 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1346, a catastrophic plague beset Europe and its neighbours. The Black Death was a human tragedy that abruptly halved entire populations and caused...
David Max Moerman, "The Japanese Buddhist World Map: Religious Vision and the Cartographic Imagination" (U Hawaii Press, 2021)
23 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From the fourteenth through the nineteenth centuries Japanese monks created hundreds of maps to construct and locate their place in a Buddhist world. ...
Andrea Ballestero, "A Future History of Water" (Duke UP, 2019)
22 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Based on fieldwork among state officials, NGOs, politicians, and activists in Costa Rica and Brazil, A Future History of Water (Duke UP, 2019) trace...
The Future of Nuclear Weapons: A Conversation with Fred Kaplan
20 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For much of the Cold War the United States had thousands more nuclear weapons than it needed. And it took decades for American political leaders to re...
Amber Sinha, "The Networked Public: How Social Media is Changing Democracy" (Rupa Publications, 2019)
20 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Amber Sinha works at the intersection law, technology and society, and studies the impact of digital technologies on socio-political processes and st...
Alex Nathanson, "A History of Solar Power Art and Design" (Routledge, 2021)
19 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Alex Nathanson's book A History of Solar Power Art and Design (Routledge, 2021) examines the history of creative applications of photovoltaic (PV) ...