New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

Michael Bresalier, "Modern Flu: British Medical Science and the Viralisation of Influenza, 1890-1950" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023)

27 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Ninety years after the discovery of human influenza virus, Modern Flu: British Medical Science and the Viralisation of Influenza, 1890—1950 (Palgr...

AI: How We Got Here in Three Powerful Tales

26 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This episode is based upon three readings: Alan Turing’s Computing Machinery and Intelligence aka The Turing Test paper. Turing starts his paper by...

Nick Couldry, "The Space of the World: Can Human Solidarity Survive Social Media and What If It Can't?" (Polity, 2024)

23 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Is human solidarity achievable in a world dominated by continuous digital connectivity and commercially managed platforms? And what if it’s not? Pro...

Matt Beane, "The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent Machines" (HarperCollins, 2024)

23 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

As part of our informal series on artificial intelligence, Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Matt Beane, Assistant Professor of Technology...

Josh Spodek, "Sustainability Simplified: The Definitive Guide to Solving All (Yes, All) Our Environmental Problems" (Amplify, 2025)

23 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Josh Spodek disconnected his Manhattan apartment from the electric grid in May 2022. Over time, he has reduced his consumption and contribution to lan...

Lindsay Weinberg, "Smart University: Student Surveillance in the Digital Age" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)

21 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Smart University: Student Surveillance in the Digital Age (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024), Lindsay Weinberg evaluates how this latest era ...

Ulises Ali Mejias and Nick Couldry, "Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

21 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the present day, Big Tech is extracting resources from us, transferring and centralizing resources from people to companies. These companies are gr...

Julien Mailland, "The Game That Never Ends: How Lawyers Shape the Videogame Industry" (MIT Press, 2024)

21 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A guide to the fascinating legal history of the videogame industry, written for nonlawyers.  Why did a judge recall FIFA 15, a nonviolent soccer game...

Chelsea Berry, "Poisoned Relations: Healing, Power, and Contested Knowledge in the Atlantic World" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)

20 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

By the time of the opening of the Atlantic world in the fifteenth century, Europeans and Atlantic Africans had developed significantly different cultu...

Luci Pangrazio and Neil Selwyn, "Critical Data Literacies: Rethinking Data and Everyday Life" (MIT Press, 2023)

19 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Data has become a defining issue of current times. Our everyday lives are shaped by the data that is produced about us (and by us) through digital tec...

Nina Edwards, "Weeds" (Reaktion, 2024)

19 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

To most of us, weeds can seem nothing more than intruders in gardens, farms and city streets. But the idea of the weed is a slippery one, constantly c...

Voices Part 3: Dork-O-Phonics

16 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Jonathan Sterne is one of the most influential scholars working on sound and listening. His 2003 book, The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound R...

Matthew S. Smith, "EverQuest" (Boss Fight Books, 2024)

15 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

“You’re in our world now.” This bold tagline led Sony’s 1999 ad blitz for EverQuest (Boss Fight Books, 2024), the year’s most anticipated ...

Margaret Ziolkowski, "Mega-Dams in World Literature: Literary Responses to Twentieth-Century Dam Building" (U of Wyoming Press, 2024)

15 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Margaret Ziolkowski’s Mega-Dams in World Literature: Literary Responses to Twentieth-Century Dam Building (University of Wyoming Press, 2022) rev...

Tom Boellstorff and Braxton Soderman, "Intellivision: How a Videogame System Battled Atari and Almost Bankrupted Barbie®" (MIT Press, 2024)

14 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The engaging story of Intellivision, an overlooked videogame system from the late 1970s and early 1980s whose fate was shaped by Mattel, Atari, and co...

Donald R. Prothero, "The Story of Earth's Climate in 25 Discoveries: How Scientists Found the Connections Between Climate and Life" (Columbia UP, 2024)

14 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over 4.5 billion years, Earth's climate has transformed tremendously. Before our more temperate recent past, the planet swung from one extreme to anot...

Meredith McKittrick, "Green Lands for White Men: Desert Dystopias and the Environmental Origins of Apartheid" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

10 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1918, South Africa’s climate seemed to be drying up. White farmers claimed that rainfall was dwindling, while nineteenth-century missionaries and...

Reem Hilu, "Digitizing Domesticity in the 1980s: The Intimate Life of Computers" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)

10 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Digitizing Domesticity in the 1980s: The Intimate Life of Computers (U Minnesota Press, 2024) shows how the widespread introduction of home computer...

Jeremy Brecher, "The Green New Deal from Below: How Ordinary People Are Building a Just and Climate-Safe Economy" (U Illinois Press, 2024)

10 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Green New Deal from Below: How Ordinary People Are Building a Just and Climate-Safe Economy (U Illinois Press, 2024) offers a visionary program ...

Benjamin J. Shestakofsky on How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality

09 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Benjamin Shestakofsky about his book, Behind the Startup: How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, an...

Tristan A. Volpe, "Leveraging Latency: How the Weak Compel the Strong with Nuclear Technology" (Oxford UP, 2023)

08 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over the last seven decades, some states successfully leveraged the threat of acquiring atomic weapons to compel concessions from superpowers. For man...

Kerry Smith, "Predicting Disasters: Earthquakes, Scientists, and Uncertainty in Modern Japan" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)

07 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Predicting Disasters: Earthquakes, Scientists, and Uncertainty in Modern Japan (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024) takes seriously attempts to r...

Bug

07 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of High Theory, Marcello Vitali-Rosati tells us about bugs! A bug can be a small insect, an illness, a spy device, or a digital malfun...

Helena Hansen et al., "Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America" (U California Press, 2023)

05 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The phrase "racial capitalism" was used by Cedric Robinson to describe an economy of wealth accumulation extracted from cheap labor, organized by ra...

J. Mijin Cha, "A Just Transition for All: Workers and Communities for a Carbon-Free Future" (MIT Press, 2024)

05 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

To meet the greenhouse gas emissions reductions needed to stave off the worst impacts of climate change, a transition away from fossil fuels must occu...

Yochai Ataria, "Not in Our Brain: Consciousness, Body, World" (Magnes Press, 2019)

04 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Yochai's book, Not in Our Brain: Consciousness, Body, World (Magnes Press, 2019), examines the meaning of psychology and life based on the premise (...

Brian Donahue, "Slow Wood: Greener Building from Local Forests" (Yale UP, 2024)

26 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Slow Wood: Greener Building from Local Forests (Yale UP, 2024), environmental historian Brian Donahue advances a radical proposal for healing th...

Megan Rae Blakely, "Technology, Intellectual Property Law, and Culture: The Tangification of Cultural Heritage" (Routledge, 2024)

25 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How can we protect diverse cultural expressions in an era of huge technological change? In Technology, Intellectual Property Law and Culture: The Tan...

Katherine C. Epstein, "Analog Superpowers: How Twentieth-Century Technology Theft Built the National Security State" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

24 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

At the beginning of the twentieth century, two British inventors, Arthur Pollen and Harold Isherwood, became fascinated by a major military question: ...

Jennifer Denbow, "Reproductive Labor and Innovation: Against the Tech Fix in an Era of Hype" (Duke UP, 2024)

24 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Reproductive Labor and Innovation: Against the Tech Fix in an Era of Hype (Duke UP, 2024), Jennifer Denbow examines how the push toward technosci...

Liliana M. Naydan, "Flat-World Fiction: Digital Humanity in Early Twenty-First-Century America" (U Georgia Press, 2021)

23 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Flat-World Fiction: Digital Humanity in Early Twenty-First-Century America (University of Georgia Press, 2021) Dr. Liliana Naydan analyses representa...

Jordan S. Carroll, "Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)

22 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Fascists such as Richard Spencer interpret science fiction films and literature as saying only white men have the imagination required to invent a hig...

Robin Phillips and Joshua Pauling, "Are We All Cyborgs Now?: Reclaiming Our Humanity from the Machine" (Basilian Media, 2024)

22 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

All We All Cyborgs Now? (Basilian Media, 2024) is a series of 32 short essay-length reflections on "Reclaiming Our Humanity from the Machine." Now i...

Fiona Smyth, "Pistols in St Paul's: Science, Music, and Architecture in the Twentieth Century" (Manchester UP, 2024)

22 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

On a winter's night in 1951, shortly after Evensong, the interior of St Paul's Cathedral echoed with gunfire. This was no act of violence but a scient...

Thinking Machines: Will Robots Have Rights?

20 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It’s the UConn Popcast, and in this episode of our series on artificial intelligence, we discuss Joanna Bryson’s essay “Robots Should be Slaves....

Anthony Kwame Harrison on Cassette Tapes and Hip Hop Culture

18 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Kwame Harrison, Alumni Distinguished Professor and Professor of Sociology at Virginia Tech. Harrison rec...

Victor P. Petrov, "Balkan Cyberia: Cold War Computing, Bulgarian Modernization, and the Information Age Behind the Iron Curtain" (MIT Press, 2023)

18 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Balkan Cyberia: Cold War Computing, Bulgarian Modernisation, and the Information Age Behind the Iron Curtain (MIT Press, 2023) examines the history ...

Lizhi Liu, "From Click to Boom: The Political Economy of E-Commerce in China" (Princeton UP, 2024)

16 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How do states build vital institutions for market development? Too often, governments confront technical or political barriers to providing the rule o...

Meta-Practice (on Chinese Medicine)

11 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today I sit down with Volker Scheid, an interdisciplinary scholar and longtime practitioner of Chinese medicine. Together, we take an intellectual dee...

Jeremy Black, "Introduction to Global Military History: 1775 to the Present Day" (Routledge, 2018)

09 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Introduction to Global Military History:: 1775 to the Present Day (Routledge, 2018) provides a lucid and comprehensive account of military developmen...

Libuse Hannah Veprek, "At the Edge of AI: Human Computation Systems and Their Intraverting Relations" (Transcript, 2024)

08 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How are human computation systems developed in the field of citizen science to achieve what neither humans nor computers can do alone?  In At the Ed...

Artur Gruszczak and Sebastian Kaempf, "Routledge Handbook of the Future of Warfare" (Routledge, 2023)

06 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This handbook provides a comprehensive, problem-driven and dynamic overview of the future of warfare. The volatilities and uncertainties of the global...

David Rowell, "The Endless Refrain: Memory, Nostalgia, and the Threat to New Music" (Melville House, 2024)

06 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A veteran music journalist argues that the rise of music streaming and the consolidation of digital platforms is decimating the musical landscape, wit...

Stuart Anderson, "Pharmacopoeias, Drug Regulation, and Empires: Making Medicines Official in Britain's Imperial World, 1618-1968" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2024)

06 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The word "pharmacopoeia" has come to have many meanings, although it is commonly understood to be a book describing approved compositions and standard...

Jerry Brotton, "Four Points of the Compass: The Unexpected History of Direction" (Penguin, 2024)

05 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

North, south, east and west: almost all societies use the four cardinal directions to orientate themselves, to understand who they are by projecting w...

Salem Elzway and Jason Resnikoff on Automation

04 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Salem Elzway, postdoctoral fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at University of Southern ...

Thinking Machines: The First AI Takeover Story

02 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It’s the UConn Popcast, and in the second of our series on Thinking Machines we consider Karel Čapek’s “Rossum’s Universal Robots” (1920)....

Brian Groom, "Made in Manchester: A People's History of the City That Shaped the Modern World" (Harpernorth, 2024)

02 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Long before Manchester gave the world titans of industry, comedy, music and sport, it was the cosmopolitan Roman fort of Mamucium. But it was as the ‘...

Richard Moss, "Tale of Two Halves: The History Of Football Video Games" (Bitmap Books, 2024)

01 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Painstakingly researched and written by football-obsessed writer and experienced game journalist, historian, and documentarian Richard Moss – author...

When We Prioritize Data and Metrics, What Happens to Human Connections?

31 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s book is: The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World (Princeton University Press, 2024), by Dr. Allison Pugh, whic...

Jamie Hakim, "Digital Intimacies: Queer Men and Smartphones in Times of Crisis" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

31 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Queer men's cultures of intimacy have long been sites of fierce contestation. Indeed, debates have raged for decades over issues such as monogamy, saf...

Greg Epstein, "Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World's Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation" (MIT Press, 2024)

30 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Technology has surpassed religion as the central focus of our lives, from our dependence on smartphones to the way that tech has infused almost every ...

Jia Tan, "Digital Masquerade: Feminist Rights and Queer Media in China" (NYU Press, 2023)

29 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Digital Masquerade: Feminist Rights and Queer Media in China (NYU Press, 2023) offers a trenchant and singular analysis of the convergence of digital...

Kostas Kampourakis, "Ancestry Reimagined: Dismantling the Myth of Genetic Ethnicities" (Oxford UP, 2023)

27 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Recent social and political psychological research indicates that increased access to ancestry testing has strengthened the notion of genetic essentia...

Ian Milligan, "Averting the Digital Dark Age: How Archivists, Librarians, and Technologists Built the Web a Memory" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)

26 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In early 1996, the web was ephemeral. But by 2001, the internet was forever. How did websites transform from having a brief life to becoming long-last...

Dolores Albarracin et al., "Creating Conspiracy Beliefs: How Our Thoughts Are Shaped" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

24 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Conspiracy theories spread more widely and faster than ever before. Fear and uncertainty prompt people to believe false narratives of danger and hidde...

Thinking Machines: The Turing Test at 75

23 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It’s the UConn Popcast, and this is the first episode in our new series about artificial intelligence and popular culture. In this first episode, we...

Michael G. Vann, "The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam" (Oxford UP, 2018)

23 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A funny thing happened to historian Michael Vann* on the way to his PhD thesis. While he was doing his research on French colonialism and the urbanist...

Thinking Machines: The Turing Test at 75

23 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It’s the UConn Popcast, and this is the first episode in our new series about artificial intelligence and popular culture. In this first episode, we...

Bob Frishman, "Edward Duffield: Philadelphia Clockmaker, Citizen, Gentleman, 1730-1803" (APS Press, 2024)

23 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Edward Duffield (1730–1803) was a colonial Philadelphia clockmaker, whose elegant brass, mahogany, and walnut timekeepers stand proudly in major Ame...

Anto Mohsin, "Electrifying Indonesia: Technology and Social Justice in National Development" (U Wisconsin Press, 2023)

21 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Electrifying Indonesia: Technology and Social Justice in National Development (U Wisconsin Press, 2023) tells the story of the entanglement of politi...

Emotional Rescue

21 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What can sound technologies tell us about our relationship to media as a whole? This is one of the central questions in the research of Phantom Power...

Wilko Graf von Hardenberg, "Sea Level: A History" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

21 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

News reports warn of rising sea levels spurred by climate change. Waters inch ever higher, disrupting delicate ecosystems and threatening island and c...

Kids Across the Spectrums: Growing Up Autistic in the Digital Age

21 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Meryl Alper, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Northeastern University, about her recent b...

William T. Taylor, "Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History" (U California Press, 2024)

17 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Which society was the first to domesticate the horse? It’s a difficult question. The archaeological record is spotty, with only very recent advancem...

Corey Ross, "Liquid Empire: Water and Power in the Colonial World" (Princeton UP, 2024)

17 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a handful of powerful European states controlled more than a third of the land surface of the planet. These...

Alastair Bonnett, "40 Maps That Will Change How You See the World" (Ivy Press, 2024)

16 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

40 Maps That Will Change How You See the World (Ivy Press, 2024) by Dr. Alistair Bonnett is a meticulously curated selection of 40 maps that spans th...

Marietje Schaake, "The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley" (Princeton UP, 2024)

15 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past decades, under the cover of "innovation," technology companies have successfully resisted regulation and have even begun to seize power ...

Wes Marshall, "Killed by a Traffic Engineer: Shattering the Delusion That Science Underlies Our Transportation System" (Island Press, 2024)

12 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the US we are nearing four million road deaths since we began counting them in 1899. The numbers are getting worse in recent years, yet we continue...

Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor, "Charging Forward: Lithium Valley, Electric Vehicles, and a Just Future" (The New Press, 2024)

09 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A clarion call for justice in the quest for clean energy California’s Salton Sea region is home to some of the worst environmental health conditions...

Risa Cromer, "Conceiving Christian America: Embryo Adoption and Reproductive Politics" (NYU Press, 2023)

09 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1997, a group of white pro-life evangelical Christians in the United States created the nation’s first embryo adoption program to “save” the ...

Critique, Wonder, and Chinese Anatomy, with Lan A. Li

08 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of the Blue Beryl Podcast, Dr Pierce Salguero sits down with the show’s producer, Lan A. Li, a historian of Chinese science, medicin...

John Withington, "A History of Fireworks from: Their Origins to the Present Day" (Reaktion, 2024)

08 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A History of Fireworks from: Their Origins to the Present Day (Reaktion, 2024) by John Withington illuminates the glittering history of fireworks, fr...

Pamela O. Long on the Long, Long, Long History of Technology

07 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with MacArthur “Genius Prize” winning historian Pamela Long about her long career writing about the histo...

Marco Bastos, "Brexit, Tweeted: Polarization and Social Media Manipulation" (Bristol UP, 2024)

06 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dissecting 45 million tweets from the period that followed the Brexit referendum, Brexit, Tweeted: Polarization and Social Media Manipulation (Brist...

Alan F. Blackwell, "Moral Codes: Designing Alternatives to AI" (MIT Press, 2024)

06 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Why the world needs less AI and better programming languages. Decades ago, we believed that robots and computers would take over all the boring jobs a...

Jeffrey Ding, "Technology and the Rise of Great Powers: How Diffusion Shapes Economic Competition" (Princeton UP, 2024)

05 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When scholars and policymakers consider how technological advances affect the rise and fall of great powers, they draw on theories that center the mom...

Gerald Sim, "Screening Big Data: Films That Shape Our Algorithmic Literacy" (Routledge, 2024)

03 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Screening Big Data: Films that Shape Our Algorithmic Literacy (Routledge, 2024) examines the influence of key films on public understanding of big da...

Christian Wolmar, "The Liberation Line: The Untold Story of How American Engineering and Ingenuity Won World War II" (Hachette, 2024)

02 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

They certainly were not soldiers, yet they suddenly found themselves in uniform, in a foreign land. But, as locomotive drivers, track-workers, conduct...

Paola Bertucci, "In the Land of Marvels: Science, Fabricated Realities, and Industrial Espionage in the Age of the Grand Tour" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)

01 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How a journey through Italy casts light on secrets, stereotypes, and the manipulation of information in eighteenth-century science. In 1749, the celeb...

Amos C. Fox, "Conflict Realism: Understanding the Causal Logic of Modern War and Warfare" (Howgate, 2024)

30 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

If you seek a compelling exploration of contemporary armed conflict, then Conflict Realism: Understanding the Causal Logic of Modern War and Warfare ...

Jason Weiss, "Listenings" (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023)

29 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Listenings (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023) is a collection of meditations on the art of experiencing sound. The writings reflect Jason Weiss's passion for il...

Annette Kehnel, "The Green Ages: Medieval Innovations in Sustainability" (Brandeis UP, 2024)

29 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Annette Kehnel joins Jana Byars to talk about The Green Ages: Medieval Innovations in Sustainability (Brandeis University Press, 2024). A fascinati...

Jonathan Maskit, "Bicycle" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

29 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

These days the bicycle often appears as an interloper in a world constructed for cars. An almost miraculous 19th-century contraption, the bicycle prom...

Jordan Minor, "Video Game of the Year: A Year-By-Year Guide to the Best, Boldest, and Most Bizarre Games from Every Year Since 1977" (Abrams, 2023)

26 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Pong. The Legend of Zelda. Final Fantasy VII. Rock Band. Fortnite. Animal Crossing: New Horizons. For each of the 40 years of video game history, ther...

Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World

26 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Why do we assume that computers always get it right? Today’s book is: Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World (MIT Press,...

Ethical Machines: A Conversation with Reid Blackman

25 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Join us as we discuss Dr. Reid Blackman’s new book: Ethical Machines: Your Concise Guide to Totally Unbiased, Transparent, and Respectful AI (Harv...

Max Hirsh and Till Mostowlansky, "Infrastructure and the Remaking of Asia" (U Hawaii Press, 2022)

24 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the twenty-first century, infrastructure has undergone a seismic shift from West to East. Once concentrated in Europe and North America, global inf...

Jason A. Josephson Storm, "The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences" (U Chicago Press, 2017)

23 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A great many theorists have argued that the defining feature of modernity is that people no longer believe in spirits, myths, or magic. Jason Ā. Jose...

Emily M. Bender on AI Hype

23 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Emily Bender, Professor of Linguistics, Director of the Masters of Science in Computational Linguistics p...

Amber Billey et al., "Inclusive Cataloging: Histories, Context, and Reparative Approaches" (ALA Editions, 2024)

22 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Filling a gap in the literature, Inclusive Cataloging: Histories, Context, and Reparative Approaches (ALA Editions and Core, 2024) provides libraria...

Gergely Gosztonyi, "Censorship from Plato to Social Media: The Complexity of Social Media’s Content Regulation and Moderation Practices" (Springer, 2023)

22 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In many countries, censorship, blocking of internet access and internet content for political purposes are still part of everyday life. Will filtering...

Amir Alexander, "Liberty's Grid: A Founding Father, a Mathematical Dreamland, and the Shaping of America" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

21 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Seen from an airplane, much of the United States appears to be a gridded land of startling uniformity. Perpendicular streets and rectangular fields, a...

Marta Fijak and Artur Ganszyniec, "How and Why We Make Games" (CRC Press, 2024)

18 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How and Why We Make Games (CRC Press, 2024) delves into the intricate realms of games and their creation, examining them through cultural, systemic, ...

Hey, Robot!

16 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, we’re playing with voice assistants and thinking about the role of voices in gaming with our guest, game designer and NYU professor Frank La...

Whitney Barlow Robles, "Curious Species: How Animals Made Natural History" (Yale UP, 2023)

13 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dive into the world of animals with Whitney Barlow Robles in her captivating new book, Curious Species: How Animals Made Natural History (Yale UP, 2...

Matthew C. Ehrlich, "The Krebiozen Hoax: How a Mysterious Cancer Drug Shook Organized Medicine" (U Illinois Press, 2024)

11 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The brainchild of an obscure Yugoslav physician, Krebiozen emerged in 1951 as an alleged cancer treatment. Andrew Ivy, a University of Illinois vice p...

Greg Eghigian, "After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon" (Oxford UP, 2024)

11 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Roswell, 1947. Washington, DC, 1952. Quarouble, 1954. New Hampshire, 1961. Pascagoula, 1973. Petrozavodsk, 1977. Copley Woods, 1983. Explore how sight...

Michael Gavin, "Literary Mathematics: Quantitative Theory for Textual Studies" (Stanford UP, 2022)

09 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Across the humanities and social sciences, scholars increasingly use quantitative methods to study textual data. Considered together, this research re...

Raquel Velho on Disability, Infrastructure, and London's Public Transport System

09 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Raquel Velho, Associate Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a...