New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

Myka Tucker-Abramson, "Cartographies of Empire: The Road Novel and American Hegemony" (Stanford UP, 2025)

18 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The road novel is often dismissed as a mundane, nostalgic genre: Jack, Sal, and other tedious white men on the road trying to recapture an authentic y...

Jacquelyn Schneider and Julia MacDonald, "The Rise of Unmanned Warfare: Origins of the Us Autonomous Military Arsenal" (Oxford UP, 2023)

17 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Rise of Unmanned Warfare: Origins of the Us Autonomous Military Arsenal (Oxford UP, 2023) tells the fascinating story of the people, processes, ...

Nicole C. Nelson, "Model Behavior: Animal Experiments, Complexity, and the Genetics of Psychiatric Disorders" (U Chicago Press, 2018)

16 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Mice are used as model organisms across a wide range of fields in science today--but it is far from obvious how studying a mouse in a maze can help us...

Brain Rot: What Our Screens Are Doing to Our Minds (8)

14 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Episode 8, Dr. Messina and Dr. Gill, the host and co-host of this podcast, talked about the emotional toll that is associated with lost time---time...

Jennifer Holt, "Cloud Policy: A History of Regulating Pipelines, Platforms, and Data" (MIT Press, 2024)

13 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How the United States' regulation of broadband pipelines, digital platforms, and data—together understood as “the cloud”—has eroded civil libe...

Beaty Rubens, "Listen In: How Radio Changed the Home" (Bodleian Library, 2025)

12 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Radio, today, can feel like a faithful old companion, but its early history was sensational. Between 1922 and 1939, British life was transformed by wh...

Darryl Campbell, "Fatal Abstraction: Why the Managerial Class Loses Control of Software" (W. W. Norton, 2025)

09 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A tech insider explains how capitalism and software development make for such a dangerous mix. Software was supposed to radically improve society. Ou...

Sandra Matz, "Mindmasters: The Data-Driven Science of Predicting and Changing Human Behavior" (HBRP, 2025)

08 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A fascinating exploration of how algorithms penetrate the most intimate aspects of our psychology—from the pioneering expert on psychological target...

Brain Rot: What Our Screens Are Doing to Our Minds (7)

07 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Drs. Messina and Gill discussed the concept of technoference, which refers to the interference of technology with human connection and its impact on p...

Peter Krapp, "Computing Legacies: Digital Cultures of Simulation" (MIT Press, 2024)

06 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We're pleased to welcome Dr. Peter Krapp, the author of Computing Legacies: Digital Cultures of Simulation (MIT Press, 2024), to the New Books Netw...

Jessica Smith on Engineering and Public Accountability in Energy Industries

05 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Jessica Smith, Professor in the Engineering, Design, and Society Department and Dean’s Fellow for Earth ...

Amanda D. Lotz, "After Mass Media: Storytelling for Microaudiences in the Twenty-First Century" (NYU Press, 2025)

02 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

With significant evolutions in digital technologies and media distribution in the past two decades, the business of storytelling through screens has s...

Institutional Corruption in News Media: A Conversation with William English

01 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why has trust in the news media declined? How can we combat biased reporting and the spread of misinformation? And how do these challenges compare to ...

Matthew Daniel Eddy, "Media and the Mind: Art, Science, and Notebooks as Paper Machines, 1700-1830" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

30 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We often think of reason as a fixed entity, as a definitive body of facts that do not change over time. But during the Enlightenment, reason also was ...

Radiophilia

28 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s guest is Carolyn Birdsall, Associate Professor of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam. If you’re a scholar of sound or radio, you like...

Melissa Villa-Nicholas, "Data Borders: How Silicon Valley Is Building an Industry Around Immigrants" (U California Press, 2023)

27 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Uncle Sam is watching, whether you like it or not. And the surveillance program the United States is building has as its foundation immigrants who hav...

Lauren E. Bridges on Fantasies and Realities of Digital Transformation and the Data Center Industry

26 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Lauren Bridges, Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, about her work on t...

Peter B. Kaufman, "The Moving Image: A User's Manual" (MIT Press, 2025)

25 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Video (television, film, the moving image generally) is today’s most popular information medium. Two-thirds of the world’s internet traffic is vid...

Daniel J. Solove, "On Privacy and Technology" (Oxford UP, 2025)

24 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Data and privacy have emerged as critical issues in our digitally interconnected era, profoundly influencing individual rights, societal norms, and de...

Howard Chiang, "After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China" (Columbia UP, 2018)

23 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Howard Chiang’s new book is a masterful study of the relationship between sexual knowledge and Chinese modernity. After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, ...

Brain Rot: What Screens Are Doing to Our Minds (6)

22 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Drs. Messina and Gill talked about cognitive offloading in our digital age—how smartphones, AI, and other technologies are reshaping our mental habi...

Will AI Transform What it Means to be Human in the Next Ten Years?

21 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s the UConn Popcast, and what impact will AI have on being human in the next decade? Elon University’s Center for Imagining the Digital Future...

Jonathan D. Cohen, "Losing Big: America's Dangerous Sports Gambling Boom" (Columbia Global Reports, 2025)

20 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 2018, the United States Supreme Court opened the floodgates for states to legalize betting on sports. Eager for revenue, almost forty states have d...

Jennifer Clapp, "Titans of Industrial Agriculture: How a Few Giant Corporations Came to Dominate the Farm Sector and Why It Matters" (MIT Press, 2025)

19 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Every year, hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of farm machinery, fertilizer, seeds, and pesticides are sold to farmers around the world. Although...

Ian Boyd, "Science and Politics" (Polity, 2024)

18 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The recent coronavirus pandemic proved that the time-old notion seems now truer than ever: that science and politics represent a clash of cultures. Bu...

María de Los Ángeles Picone, "Landscaping Patagonia: Spatial History and Nation-Making in Chile and Argentina" (UNC Press, 2025)

17 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In late nineteenth-century Latin America, governments used new scientific, technological, and geographical knowledge not only to consolidate power and...

Yellowlees Douglas, "Writing for the Reader's Brain: A Science-Based Guide" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

16 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What makes one sentence easy to read and another a slog that demands re-reading? Where do you put information you want readers to recall? Drawing on c...

Anita Say Chan, "Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future" (U California Press, 2025)

15 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s a common refrain: AI is neither good nor bad because that depends on how its used. Professor Anita Say Chan begs to differ. Chan is the author ...

Ysabel Gerrard, "The Kids Are Online: Confronting the Myths and Realities of Young Digital Life" (U California Press, 2025)

13 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How do young people use digital platforms? In The Kids are Online: Confronting the Myths and Realities of Young Digital Life (U California Press, ...

Milena Droumeva, "Playthrough Poetics: Gameplay as Research Method" (Amherst College Press, 2024)

12 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Game streamers and live commentators are producing increasingly comprehensive analyses of gameplay, yet scholarship still tends to flatten the experie...

Brain Rot: How Screens Affect the Minds of Middle-Age and Older Adults

10 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In episode 5 Dr. Karyne Messina and Dr. Harry Gill talked about what can happen when middle-age and older adults watch screens too much as opposed to ...

Jeremy Braddock on "Firesign: The Electromagnetic History of Everything as Told on Nine Comedy Albums"

09 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Jeremy Braddock, Associate Professor of Literatures in English and Coordinator of the Media Studies Init...

Rebecca Heisman, "Flight Paths: How a Passionate and Quirky Group of Pioneering Scientists Solved the Mystery of Bird Migration" (Harper, 2025)

08 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Flight Paths (HarperCollins, 2023), Rebecca Heisman illuminates the stories and methods of the scientists who unlocked the secrets of bird migrat...

Paddy Walker, "War Without Oversight: Why We Need Humans on the Battlefield" (Howgate, 2025)

07 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Amid the fanfare around AI and autonomous weapons, decision-makers - both military and political - are imagining an augmented future for warfare that ...

John Alekna, "Seeking News, Making China: Information, Technology, and the Emergence of Mass Society" (Stanford UP, 2024)

06 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Contemporary developments in communications technologies have overturned key aspects of the global political system and transformed the media landscap...

James Boyle Draws the Line Between Humans and AI

05 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s the UConn Popcast, and we spoke with Duke Law Professor James Boyle about his new book The Line: AI and the Future of Personhood (MIT Press,...

Anna Farro Henderson, "Core Samples: A Climate Scientist's Experiments in Politics and Motherhood" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

03 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Climate scientist and policy expert Anna Farro Henderson embarks on a remarkable narrative journey in Core Samples: A Climate Scientist's Experiments...

Marc Owen Jones, "Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Deception, Disinformation and Social Media" (Hurst/Oxford UP, 2021)

02 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the latest episode of Unlocking Academia, host Raja Aderdor sits down with Marc Owen Jones, associate professor at Northwestern University in Qata...

Rhys Machold, "Fabricating Homeland Security: Police Entanglements Across India and Palestine/Israel" (Stanford UP, 2024)

01 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Homeland security is rarely just a matter of the homeland; it involves the circulation and multiplication of policing practices across borders. Though...

Making Radio History

31 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Elena Razlogova is an Associate Professor of History at Concordia University. She is the author of The Listener’s Voice: Early Radio and the Ameri...

Peder Anker, "For The Love of Bombs: The Trail of Nuclear Suffering" (Anthem Press, 2025)

30 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The truism that history is written by its winners reflects the literature about how the bomb came about, with apologetic books most often written by U...

The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking

29 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For many, technology offers hope for the future―that promise of shared human flourishing and liberation that always seems to elude our species. Arti...

Jeremy Black, "A History of Britain's Transport" (Pen and Sword, 2025)

28 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

An accessible book to draw on popular interest in transport history, routes, vehicles and experiences. Transport history is social and industrial nati...

Matt Mahmoudi, "Migrants in the Digital Periphery: New Urban Frontiers of Control" (U California Press, 2025)

27 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As the fortification of Europe's borders and its hostile immigration terrain has taken shape, so too have the biometric and digital surveillance indus...

Chris Skinner, "Intelligent Money: When Money Thinks for You" (Marshall Cavendish, 2024)

26 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.f...

Sex and Love with Robots and Chatbots

26 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s the UConn Popcast, and can you fall in love with ChatGPT? Can, and should, you have sex with a robot? We asked Professor Kate Devlin, a leadin...

Anita Say Chan, "Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future" (U California Press, 2025)

25 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future (University of California Press, 2025) illuminates the throughline betwe...

The Audiobook's Century-Long Overnight Success

24 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today we present the first episode of a miniseries on audiobooks by getting into the history and theory of the medium. Audiobooks are having a moment—...

Jeffrey Lee Funk on Unicorns, Hype, and Bubbles

24 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with retired professor, consultant, Discovery Institute fellow, and a winner of the NTT DoCoMo Mobile Science...

Surekha Davies, "Humans: A Monstrous History" (U California Press, 2025)

23 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Monsters are central to how we think about the human condition. Join award-winning historian of science in Humans: A Monstrous History (University o...

Richard Buttny, "Unfracked: The Struggle to Ban Fracking in New York" (U Massachusetts Press, 2024)

18 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Richard Buttny, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies at S...

Brain Rot: How Screens Affect the Minds of Young Adults (4)

16 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode Dr. Karyne Messina, a New Books Network host, and Dr. Harry Gill discussed the negative effects of excessive screen time on young adul...

Mia Consalvo et al., "Streaming by the Rest of Us: Microstreaming Videogames on Twitch" (MIT Press, 2025)

14 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The vast majority of people who stream themselves playing videogames online do so with few or no viewers. In Streaming by the Rest of Us: Microstream...

Karl Berglund, "Reading Audio Readers: Book Consumption in the Streaming Age" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

13 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What is the future of reading? In Reading Audio Readers: Book Consumption in the Digital Age (Bloombury, 2024), Karl Berglund, Assistant Professor ...

Matthew Fuhrmann, "Influence without Arms: The New Logic of Nuclear Deterrence" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

12 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How does nuclear technology influence international relations? While many books focus on countries armed with nuclear weapons, this volume puts the sp...

Leigh Ann Henion, "Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark" (Algonquin, 2024)

11 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

“Almost every storyline we’re familiar with suggests that we should banish [darkness] as quickly as possible—because darkness is often presented...

M. Chirimuuta, "The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience" (MIT Press, 2024)

10 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This book is available open access here.  The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience (MIT Press, 2024), Maz...

Eleni Kalantidou on Design, Repairability, and Cultures of Repair

10 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Eleni Kalantidou, Assistant Professor at the Queensland College of Art and Design, about the volume of e...

On Barak, "Heat, a History: Lessons from the Middle East for a Warming Planet" (U California Press, 2024)

10 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Despite the flames of record-breaking temperatures licking at our feet, most people fail to fully grasp the gravity of environmental overheating. What...

Lessons on Living with AI from the Home Computer Revolution: Revisiting Sherry Turkle’s “The Second Self”

10 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s the UConn Popcast, and we've been experiencing a revolution in the past few years, as artificial intelligence becomes an increasingly common p...

Luis F. Alvarez Leon, "The Map in the Machine: Charting the Spatial Architecture of Digital Capitalism" (U California Press, 2024)

08 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Digital technologies have changed how we shop, work, play, and communicate, reshaping our societies and economies. To understand digital capitalism, w...

Jeremy Black, "A History of the Railroad in 100 Maps" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

08 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Since their origins in eighteenth-century England, railroads have spread across the globe, changing everything in their path, from where and how peopl...

Eric Dienstfrey, "Making Stereo Fit: The History of a Disquieting Film Technology" (U California Press, 2024)

07 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Surround sound is often mistaken as a relatively new phenomenon in cinemas, one that emerged in the 1970s with the arrival of Dolby. Making Stereo Fi...

Jorge Goldstein, "Patenting Life: Tales from the Front Lines of Intellectual Property and the New Biology" (Georgetown UP, 2025)

07 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Jorge Goldstein, the author of Patenting Life: The Commercialization of Biology, delves into the critical junction where biotechnolo...

Daniel J. Solove, "On Privacy and Technology" (Oxford UP, 2025)

07 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Succinct and eloquent, On Privacy and Technology (Oxford UP, 2025) is an essential primer on how to face the threats to privacy in today's age of d...

Simona Valeriani, "The Royal Albert Hall: Building the Arts and Sciences" (Brepols, 2024)

05 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Royal Albert Hall: Building the Arts and Sciences (Brepols, 2024) by Dr. Simona Valeriani takes one of London’s most iconic buildings and decon...

Kyle Orland, "Minesweeper" (Boss Fight Books, 2023)

04 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

If you had some free time and a Windows PC in the 1990s, your mouse probably crawled its way to Minesweeper, an exciting watch-where-you-click puzzle ...

Sonic AI

03 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today we hear two scholars reading their recent work on artificial intelligence. Steph Ceraso studies the technology of “voice donation,” which pr...

Robert Houghton, "The Middle Ages in Computer Games: Ludic Approaches to the Medieval and Medievalism" (Boydell & Brewer, 2024)

03 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Games with a medieval setting are commercially lucrative and reach a truly massive audience. Moreover, they can engage their players in a manner that ...

Webb Keane, "Animals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the Moral Imagination" (Princeton UP, 2025)

03 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Revolutions in technology are fundamentally transforming what it means to be human. Or are they? As Webb Keane points out, before humans consulted C...

Christos Lynteris, "Visual Plague: The Emergence of Epidemic Photography" (MIT Press, 2022)

02 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How epidemic photography during a global pandemic of bubonic plague contributed to the development of modern epidemiology and our concept of the “pa...

Sam Srauy, "Race, Culture and the Video Game Industry: A Vicious Circuit" (Routledge, 2024)

01 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

My guest today Sam Srauy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, Journalism, and Public Relations at Oakland University, Her res...

Daniel Silverman, "Seeing Is Disbelieving: Why People Believe Misinformation in War, and When They Know Better" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

28 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Factual misinformation is spread in conflict zones around the world, often with dire consequences. But when is this misinformation actually believed, ...

Sybil Derrible, "The Infrastructure Book: How Cities Work and Power Our Lives" (Prometheus Books, 2025)

27 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Clean water, paved roads, public transit, electricity and gas, sewers, waste processing, telecommunication, even the Internet – all this infrastruct...

Jeff Yoshimi, "Gaming Cancer: How Building and Playing Video Games Can Accelerate Scientific Discovery" (MIT Press, 2025)

27 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Can experimenting with game design increase our chances of finding a cure for cancer? Cancer is crafty, forcing us to be just as clever in our efforts...

The Internet, Power, and the Deep State: Zeynep Tufekci on Technology and Democracy Today

26 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As the second Trump administration reshapes the U.S. government and its role in the world, how do technology, media, and political power intersect? In...

Aure Schrock on Politics Recoded: The Infrastructural Organizing of Code for America

24 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Aure Schrock, an interdisciplinary technology scholar and writing coach and editor at Indelible Voice, a...

In “The Beast,” AI Puts Limits on Human Emotion

22 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s the UConn Popcast, and “The Beast” is a 2023 sci fi / romance movie by French director Bertrand Bonello, in which artificial intelligence ...

Peter D. Hershock, "Buddhism and Intelligent Technology: Toward a More Humane Future" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

21 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Machine learning, big data and AI are reshaping the human experience and forcing us to develop a new ethical intelligence. In Buddhism and Intelligen...

Mario Cams and Elke Papelitzky, "Remapping the World in East Asia: Toward a Global History of the 'Ricci Maps'" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)

20 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When we think of the sixteenth-century arrival of European missionaries in East Asia, there is a tendency to imagine this meeting as a civilizational ...

Brain Rot: What Our Screen Are Doing to Our Minds (3)

19 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the third podcast of this series, “Brain Rot: What Our Screen Are Doing to Our Minds,” host Dr. Karyne Messina, psychologist, psychoanalyst and...

The Anxious Generation: A Conversation with Jonathan Haidt

19 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of Madison's Notes, Jonathan Haidt, renowned social psychologist and author, dives deep into the impact of digital saturation on toda...

Nicole Lobdell, "X-Ray" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

19 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

X-rays are powerful. Moving through objects undetected, revealing the body as a tryptic of skin, tissue, and bone. X-rays gave rise to a transparent w...

Asheesh Kapur Siddique, "The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World" (Yale UP, 2024)

19 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Over the span of two hundred years, Great Britain established, governed, lost, and reconstructed an empire that embraced three continents and two ocea...

Ray Brescia, "The Private Is Political: Identity and Democracy in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism" (NYU Press, 2025)

17 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As Americans increasingly depend upon their phones, computers, and internet resources, their actions are less private than they believe. Data is routi...

Jessica A. Brockmole, "Pink Cars and Pocketbooks: How American Women Bought Their Way Into the Driver's Seat" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2025)

16 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Since the commercial introduction of the automobile, US automakers have always sought women as customers and advertised accordingly. How, then, did ca...

Luiz Valério P. Trindade, "Hate Speech and Abusive Behaviour on Social Media: A Cross-Cultural Perspective" (Vernon Press, 2024)

15 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The pernicious social impact of social media platforms is a matter of global concern, as this digital technology has become a breeding ground for the ...

Xiangli Ding, "Hydropower Nation: Dams, Energy, and Political Changes in Twentieth-Century China" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

15 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As a rising infrastructure powerhouse, China has the largest electricity generation capacity in the world today. Its number of large dams is second to...

Peter Burke, "Ignorance: A Global History" (Yale UP, 2024)

14 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Throughout history, every age has thought of itself as more knowledgeable than the last. Renaissance humanists viewed the Middle Ages as an era of dar...

Brain Rot: What Screens Are Doing to Our Minds (2)

13 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

“Brain Rot,” the 2024 Oxford word of the year captures the essence of our new podcast that is being created as a special series on the New Books N...

Astrid J. Smith, "Transmediation and the Archive: Decoding Objects in the Digital Age" (Arc Humanities Press, 2024)

10 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Building on the field of modern archival practice, Transmediation and the Archive: Decoding Objects in the Digital Age (ARC Humanities Press, 2024) ...

Gabriella Coleman on Hackers Cultures (Plural!)

10 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, and guest host, Paula Bialski, Associate Professor for Digital Sociology at the University of St. Gallen in St. Gal...

Shoumita Dasgupta, "Where Biology Ends and Bias Begins: Lessons on Belonging from Our DNA" (U California Press, 2025)

10 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Dasgupta is a geneticist and internationally recognized anti-racism educator. In this book, she provides a powerful, science-based rebuttal to com...

Our History with AI is (much) Longer than You Think (with Kevin LaGrandeur)

08 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s the UConn Popcast, and when did we really start dreaming about the promise, and the danger, of artificial intelligence? When ChatGPT was relea...

Daniel Oberhaus, "The Silicon Shrink: How Artificial Intelligence Made the World an Asylum" (MIT Press, 2025)

04 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

AI psychiatrists promise to detect mental disorders with superhuman accuracy, provide affordable therapy for those who can't afford or can't access tr...

Marijam Did, "Everything to Play For: An Insider's Guide to How Videogames are Changing Our World" (Verso, 2024)

03 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Everything to Play For: How Videogames Are Changing the World (Verso, 2024) by Marijiam Did asks if videogames can achieve egalitarian goals instead ...

Mirca Madianou, "Technocolonialism: When Technology for Good is Harmful" (Polity, 2024)

01 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

With over 300 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, and with emergencies and climate disasters becoming more common, AI and big data are ...

Antonio A. Casilli, "Waiting for Robots: The Hired Hands of Automation" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

31 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Artificial Intelligence fuels both enthusiasm and panic. Technologists are inclined to give their creations leeway, pretend they’re animated beings,...

Understanding Disinformation

30 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How do we discern what is factual from what isn’t? In this episode, Dr. Colleen Sinclair joins us to discuss the functions of disinformation, and to...

A.I. is Spielberg & Kubrick’s Dark Twisted Fantasy

28 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s the UConn Popcast, and A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Steven Spielberg’s 2001 movie, is a strange and profound text on human-AI relations. Ce...